Bugs: Team Eight
by CellCloneBot
Summary: A story about the trials of team eight (Shino, Hinata, Kiba). Chapter 9: The team is at the Forest of Death disarming traps for the upcoming chuunin exam. Pairing? ShinoIno... maybe.
1. Shino's Super Sneeze! So Suddenly!

Team Eight  
  
Kurenai was late for her appointment to meet with her first students. "How will anyone take me seriously if I'm late?"   
  
Outside the Ninja Academy of the Hidden Leaf Village, Yuuhi Kurenai turned her red eyes to a grey haired book worm named Hatake Kakashi, who sat on a wooden plank swing underneath a tree and read his book. With his face covered in blue cloth, and his left eye underneath his slanted headband, he directed his exposed eye back at her and nodded.   
  
"Kakashi," she said to the experienced Jounin, which she had only joined the ranks of recently, "haven't your students arrived yet?"  
  
"They have." His feet moved from heel to toe to slightly swing. "They can wait. The teacher of my teacher used to make his students wait hours as he frequently used the washroom. It is a matter of respect to wait a long time for your teacher."  
  
"Wasn't your teacher a student of Jiraiya?" Kurenai recalled the name of the legendary ninja and writer of the erotic book that Kakashi continously read. She thought about questioning the story more, but Kakashi had either known what the wait was for or was completely clueless. She changed the subject. "I heard you have the number one rookie under your wings."  
  
"That's news to me. I always wanted to fail the top rookie." He replied.   
  
Kurenai was shocked. "Does anyone enjoy talking to him?" She thought. She deployed a long silence and waited for him to get back to his book. When the connection severed, she walked into the academy.   
  
A-------------------------------  
  
Team eight consisted of three new Genins; all of them were successors of their clan. Kiba, with a white small dog named Akamaru on his wild black hair, leaned on the wall near an opened window. "Isn't this cool Akamura?" He said and the puppy barked. He chuckled. "I suggest that I will be the leader of this group." He looked at Hinata who sat on a chair avoiding eye contact. "Do you have a problem with that, Hinata?"   
  
She glaced at his war painted face. Two long upside down triangles placed under his eyes and down his cheeks. Her technique that passed down from her clan had not activated, but her pale blue eyes could still see stuff that she did not want to know. When she looked at some people, they frightened her and she didn't have any luck when one of those people were in her group. She faced away from Kiba and straight ahead against the backboard stood Shino with his hands in his pockets. She looked down quickly. "I hope I didn't offend him."  
  
A flare in his coat collar covered up to his nose and the rest of his face hid under black round lens of his sunglasses and his head protector. "Shino? He can't lead!" Kiba pointed towards him and his puppy barked. "Akamura's right; he doesn't smell human."  
  
Shino stood without reacting to Kiba and instead turned to the door that soon opened. Kurenai walked into the classroom. "Hello group eight, I'm an your instructor, Yuuhi Kurenai. Can everyone take a seat please."  
  
Kiba took the nearest seat but Shino had not moved. Kurenai walked up to the black board and tapped Shino. The clone vanished in a fading cloud. Kiba and Hinata searched the room and found him sitting behind Hinata. She bit her finger as Shino did not return any stares.   
  
"Sorry for my lateness. We will start my introducing ourselves, telling each other what we inspire towards and your life." She smiled, took in a deep breath and began. "My name is Kurenai. When I was five years old, I had wanted to be a world famous musician, but being a successor to the clan, they wanted me to be ninja. The next goal in my life was made at the age of seven when I had recieved my very first and last pencil set. From then, my life was going to be an artists and I went out everyday to draw. This dream ended a month later because I was a successor ot my clan. Well, we don't get everything we want in life. I have just remembered that once I had a camera that I bought with extra money for helping out my teacher. My closet became my dark room for processing the picture I had taken, and I got an award. My parents were very proud of me, being photographers, and said that once I get a successor to the clan that I can take up the career myself."  
  
Kiba started though the instructor had pointed at Hinata. "My name is Kiba." His dog barked. "And this is dog, Akamura. I'm the leader of this group. You can count on Akamura and me."  
  
Hinata waited a bit then opened her mouth. It closed and she played with her fingers and played with a long strait of blue hair that boarded around her faint round face that showed her embarrassment plainly with red hot marks, the same tone as Kiba's face paint, as vertical slants under her eyes. She conceded everyone waited for her answer and recoil with playing with her head protector that wrapped around her neck. "My name's Hinata," she released in a small voice. She placed her hands over her face and muttered what no one heard. A bee on her table took flight, and Akamura watched it.   
  
The teacher said, "Okay, there is plently of time to get to know each other. How about you?"  
  
Shino was watching a bee that danced on a table and paid little attention to what Kurenai said. The bee flew into Shino's pocket that his hand was in and Akamura leaped off Kiba's head and approached Shino. "Come on, I heard you have an allegry. What is it? When I know, you wouldn't have to say any more." Kurenai paid no attention to the prowling dog. The dog had caught her eye when it jumped up next to Shino and growled. The question of his allegry and the enigma that surrounded him that Kiba and Hinata could sense was answered without words. Shino was allegric to dogs, and what was in him that made him smell inhuman and what Hinata never wanted to detect came out his nose and mouth as he sneezed his what technique his clan inherited. Hundred of bugs swarm out of his body and into Hinata's face and hair. Akamura had his own problem with the bugs as they suck the chakra that they normal fed off from Shino. Shino had lost his attention and the bugs acted on their own.  
  
Hinata shrieked and ran her hands in her short hair aggravating the bugs that fended in their own defense as they tangled in her hair. When Kurenai shook off the shock, she ran to Hinata and found the bugs had returned to Shino who sat still. The bugs on Akamur had also taken the same plan. Kiba held his dog that hung weak in his arms. In anger, he punched the static Shino and dented his face that dissolved into bugs with the rest of his body. "I knew he wasn't human." Kiba said with a clutched fist. He looked over at Hinata who grasped her arms around the instructor. The bugs that had created Shino's body marched to the open window.  
  
B----------------------------  
  
Shino waited with his knees bent near a river and then the destruction bugs that filled his body that he inherited from his clan moved out of the forest and up his pant legs. He looked into the water and removed his glasses and removed his grey coat. All of the bugs filled him and his exposed eyes crawled with a female bugs exiting and entering under his eyelids. He let out a sight, and his open mouth brimmed over with bugs. Shino knew what he had to do, his pet bee that he kept around told him everything and left him with a choice. He reached behind his head to his black spiky hair and untied the knot of his head protector. All of his face was bare and the falling bandana rippled the water.  
  
C------------------------  
  
Hokage sat ahead of Kurenai at a table with tea. "I heard your first day of training Genins had not gone so well," he spoken in a rash but polite voice. The Hokage, the head of the hidden village, waved another ninja over who brought him a scroll. "The history of the Aburame clan and all of its members are a mystery. Their origin is unknown as the first Aburame member entered his village with this ninja techinque that allowed him to control destruction bugs. They don't speak much about anything as you have found out; so we don't know if they are a clan springing from another hidden village, though no one has claimed them."   
  
"I didn't know that Shino was from that clan. Also, his classmates were surprised to know of his technique to control those bugs. With the Byakugan of Hinata's and Kiba's sense, how did he keep it a secret?"   
  
He took a toke from his pipe. "I can only answer why he would keep his origin a secret. There is a stigma for young Aburame members to fit in as they are likely to hear harsh insults about their clan. I would advise you to encourage this boy and find a way to make team eight cooperate." He handed her a scroll. "Here is your test to give to your squad tomorrow. If Shino does not show up for the test, then the whole team fails."  
  
"Understood."  
  
D----------------------  
  
Kiba and Hinata walked down the street, with Akamura in the hood of Kiba's grey sweater. "I rather be paired up with Naruto." Kiba said to show his disgust in Shino. Before Kiba could continue, she injected: "Me too."  
  
He looked at her and she blushed; he thought she had taken the same position of hating Naruto with that remark. "At first, I thought that Shino would be a strange teammate, but can I be paired up with a sack of bugs?" He reached behind him and patted his dog. "The only nonhuman I will ever fight with is Akamura."  
  
"He's not inhuman," she said and shocked herself as well as Kiba. She thought: "Now I know why I couldn't look at Shino, it was like the first time I saw Naruto. But Shino still creeps me out while I have no wrong feelings on Naruto."   
  
Down the road they came to a bar that Shikamaru sat in front at a table of playing a game of go. Kiba knew right away that his old classmate was coming up as he heard a complaint: "Complaining, how troublesome."  
  
"Hi, Shikamaru," Hinata said. Shikamaru could control his shadow, and if he connected his shadow to another person, he could make them do what he does. At the momemt, his opponent was the top female student, Ino. She moved some thread of blonde hair out of her eyes, and Shikamaru rubbed his head. "Hi, Ino."  
  
"Hello, Hinata and Kiba." Ino said. Her abilities were mind control, and that had been the reason she challenged the unbeatable Shikamaru to a game. They had went to his favourite table and she tried to get her hands up to her face to perform the technique, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Shikamaru brushed off a stone of the board. "Wait, I didn't mean to make that move." That was a common phrase she had said as many of her moves seemed logical but made little sense. Her first mistake happened after she put her hands on her face, and all she would have needed to do was move her hands in front of her face and form a triangle. She had question in her mind, "I'm not that bad at this game! Why am I making all of these mistakes?"  
  
"Ino?" Hinata said. Ino and Shikamaru were looking at her. Suddenly, a narrow shadow moved from under the table and aimed for Hinata. She jumped out of the way. Ino knew what happened.  
  
"You have used your shadow technique on me haven't you." Ino said. She remembered all the times he touched the board when she made her moves. "You were leaving behind debris on the table so you could pretend like you were moving it off the board but you were controlling me to make bad moves as I mirrored your movements!"  
  
Shikamaru calmly said: "I knew you would try your technique on me, and only after you put your hands on your face did I keep you from using your technique. And for misguiding your moves, I did so to practice my own technique."  
  
Ino knew Shikamaru was right, but she would not tell him. Kiba laughed and was impressed by the tactics. He had thought this lazy class mate wasn't any smarter than Naruto. "What do you think of Shino?"  
  
"Aburame Shino, the one would controls bugs?" Shikamaru asked.  
  
"Yeah, how did you know he could control bugs?" Kiba asked.  
  
"He has a pet bee." He replied. He adjusted his headband that went around his shoulder. "Only an idiot couldn't figure that out. Aburame is the clan that controls distruction bugs in their bodies. At a young age, the leader of the clan throws the child in a nest and allow the bugs to live off the person's chakra. As a result, the bugs can fight for them."   
  
Ino got out of her chair and punched him into the table. "I didn't know he was part of that bug clan!" She walked away. Shikamaru got up and sat back up. "So?" Kiba continued, "what do you think of him?"  
  
"I'm not good with him, too troublesome." He watched the clouds past by for a while. "I guess not many newer ninjas know about all of the clans in Hidden Leaf Village. I can't tell you much about him since he doesn't talk much. I asked him once if he didn't like speaking because bugs would fall out of his mouth. With a simple word, he said 'yes'. He's a bit insecure about it, but I think he hides it as much as possible for the element of surprise."   
  
"I thought he was a bag of bugs, but he's a human filled with them. That's even dirtier." Kiba said. Shikamaru got up slowly and with his eyes closed stretched his hands high and pointed his index finger out to the sky. Kiba and Hinata looked up to see only sky. "I've wasted enough time. Ever notice when one person yawns, another person does too?" Shikamaru yawned into his fists, and then extended them to his side fast. "Bye."  
  
Kiba looked at Hinata and rubbed the arm closest to where she was standing. "Why did you hit me?" Kiba asked. He remembered her standing up for Shino earlier: "He's not inhuman." However, Hinata had spoke about how he was not made of bugs, then turned up to the sky at which Shikamaru had pointed.   
  
She worked it out in silence; "I thought the hit was a reflex, but Shikamaru used his shadow intimation on me when he made us look at the sky. Then explained why I would have my hands in front of my face if Kiba had seen me. How awful!"   
  
"I think we should part ways now." Kiba stated.   
  
E--------------------------  
  
The room had a collection of bugs and arachnids on spider web shelves hanging from the ceiling that Shino used to train individual destruction bugs. The floor was nothing more then ground and around his room was a garden and in the middle was grass so soft that one may mistake it for carpet. For his pet bee, flowers were planted. He rested in his hammock made from vines that crawled on the ceiling. He listened to a song with a monotone voice: "I got bugs/ I got bugs in my room/ Bugs in my room/ Bugs in my bed/ Their eggs are in my head/ Bugs are in my pocket/ Bugs are in my shoes/ Bugs in the way I feel about you."  
  
From the foliage covering his doorway to his room, Kurenai entered. A bug followed an order to turn off the song. She looked around and questioned why she had taken off her shoes in the first place. Kurenai noticed bugs everywhere: a bee was on the window; a praying mantids was cutting the grass; and a spider busied itself with the shelves. This was the special nursery for the successor of the Aburame clan. "Shino, you don't have to talk to me if you don't want to, but I came here with something to say." He stared at the ceiling and bugs crawled on his face obstructing his view. This was the first time he had shown his full face to another person, and she wondered if he had hid his face because of shame or mystery. When she thought of Shino, she thought about Kakashi: "With his face and one eye always covered up, and that book. That bib around his mouth to absorb the drool. No, I shouldn't think about him that way." She shook her head back into reality. She put a scroll on his desk. "This scroll is your first mission. You don't have to come if you don't want to, I'll understand."  
  
Looking at his face, she wonder about a rumour he must have heard: "Why do you never hear a person from the Aburame clan talk or see them eat? Because they have puke on their food and they have insect tongues to suck it up." She could feel something solid on the back of her legs. She looked around to see a chair and took a seat. The desk that she put the scroll on separated and broken into bugs that gave him the scroll. She knew from where the chair had come. "Does he try to bug, ah,annoy people on purpose?" She thought. She vanished in smoke.  
  
Kurenai was outside holding Shino against the wall. She retrieved a kunai and stabbed him in one of his uprised hands. Blood rushed out and bugs under his grey jacket's sleeve crawled out to mend the wound. He raised an eyebrow. "You may be able to fool your contemporaries and spy, and you may have some reasons to expect people think you're different. But you are different." She yelled. The bee on the window and the collection of other small bugs would have not grabbed the attention of other lower class ninjas. "That doesn't give you the right to take away other people's privacy to know if they are insulting you. I understand you have it hard, but you aren't making your life any more easy. People have a lot worst things inside them that are real burdens. A lot of ninjas would like to be part of a clan, but you're too self-loathing to know you're gifted."   
  
She left him hanging there, and the bugs crawled under the foot of space between the wall and the ground and helped him.   
  
-------- End of Chapter One ------------  
  
Next Chapter: Tomorrow, will Shino arrive for the test? Of course, you've seen the show. But how will Shino grow as a teammate with Kiba and Hinata... and Akaramu. The relationship between Kiba and Hinata is a bit rocky as well. There's a promise of mishaps and super cunning tactics. Find out how team eight passes the test.   
  
Notes: The song that Shino was listening to was "Bugs" by Pearl Jam.  
  
Some names may be incorrect as I used some from bad sources: message boards.   
  
Predictions: I have expected this story to go on until the Chuunin Selection Exam so I don't state too much that has already happened in the television show. I expect that team eight, including the second exam has a lot of screen time to explain what had happened to them during the exam.   
  
Shino didn't say anything in his chapter, but he had a major role in it. As with next chapters, there will be a focus on him, as well as the others, but I prefer that he doesn't speak. He's suppose to be a mystery. Out of all the characters, I thought that he would be the biggest challenge to write correctly, so I hope I wrote him well.   
  
Comments and suggestions are welcomed as long as it doesn't involve pairing up two characters romatically. These paragraphs have been cut out for personal usage. 


	2. The Test That Made Them a Team

Bugs: Team Eight  
  
Chapter 2: The Test That Stumped Them All  
  
The morning of the test, Hinata, Kiba and Akamaru walked on the gravel pathway. He didn't want to hold a grudge on Hinata for an insignificant act. What he was interested in was her reaction if Shino showed up for the test as well as going out of his way to step on bugs of all types that crossed his path. "Dammit," he said, "I thought we were finished taking tests."  
  
They neared the bridge Kurenai appeared standing next to the wooden railing. Also there, Shino had his hands in his pockets. Kiba recognized he wasn't wearing his head protector and smiled to his thought; "He's stepping down." He realized that Hinata had decreased her pace and fell behind him. Without a second guess, Kiba ran at Shino and threw a left punch. He ducked and swung over to Kiba's left side. Kiba twisted to the right and elbowed Shino in the face knocking his sun glasses next to Kurenai's feet. "Enough," she scorned them then bent down to pick up his sun glasses. Shino had his hands over his eyes and she reached her hand holding his glasses to his hand. "Teammates shouldn't act like that. Ninjas are formed into teams, and in the nature of being in a team, they must rely on eachother. If you can't get past your fears, self-interest, or paranoia then you are formed in your ways and not the way of the team. The point of having teammates is to break form, that which can be predicted and controlled. Take the river as an example: it is formless; it can't be controlled. Levees break and human made rivers split off and flood. The purpose of the three person three is to emulate a raging river, where when one some leaps into it, if he fights it he will die and must surrender to its way to survive. The river is affected by three things: the land it carves, the life that it contains, and the water that it flows. When anyone of these parts reminds a mystery, the outcome is unknown. Then understand, you have to merge and sustain each member and then you gain the will of the battle."  
  
Kurenai tapped her head protector. "There is a location transcripted on the back of my head protector that appears when exposed to the sun. Your mission is to get the information of the location. The last one there, fails."  
  
She disappeared. Kiba looked at Hinata, "The person who gets the head protector off her will be at the greatest disadvanage when heading for the location," he stated. "If the person who removes the head protector isn't me, then I can have Akamaru look at the location have him tell me the answer. Hinata could use her Byakugan once the light hits the transcription. As for Shino, he could use his pet bee to show him it too." He set his dog off his head. "Therefore, I don't want anyone following me."  
  
Hinata and Kiba separated taking different ways of the bridge. Shino stayed in his place. "You aren't going to tell me how you knew I was still here, aren't you?" Kurenai asked. She broke through the planks of the bridge and landed on the railing. "I've heard the team's plan. You wouldn't be able to take away my head protector."  
  
Hinata's Byakugan that crackled her eyes and filled veins to the outer side of her eyes with charka had allowed her to see 360 degrees and caught Shino facing Kurenai. She turned around and focused on Kurenai who had a bug crawling under her head protector. An effort had to be made on her part to look through Shino who was filled will charka loaded bugs sworming his body. She jumped on a branch with leafs that covered people from seeing her, but she could see through the leafs. With her view focused on Shino and Kurenai, she lost her view of what is around her and was shocked when Kiba landed on a branch next to her. "Shino is smarter than I thought. I got a note by him early in the morning. He wrote he could keep a tab on her if he could get a female bug that crawl around his eyes on her. If I could knock his glasses towards her, he would have a female bug that only male bugs can smell on the glasses. Now, Akamura should lead them to traps I have planted."  
  
Shino had bugs crawling on his head and they transformed into a head band. "Are you ready to become a ninja?" She asked. He threw a kunai at her and she pulled out a kunai to intercept it. Her instincts reflected on his room, the chair and desk made out of bugs, and she turned sideways and dodged it as it decomposed into bugs.  
  
"It missed," Hinata told Kiba.   
  
"Just wait," Kiba said.  
  
As the bugs spread apart, underneath, another kunai was hid under the shadow of the bug kunai. Instead of impaling in the railing, it turned into Amakura who recoiled from the railing and bit Kurenai in the forehead. Kurenai was replaced by a log. She appeared behind Shino, "They're working together?"  
  
Shino looked at Amakura who pointed his head into the forest on the other side of the bridge from Kiba and Shino. Shino used the body replacement technique as well and Kurenai hit a log. From the forest, that Kiba had laid the trap, a group of shurikens hit her.  
  
Shino stood in a tree and watched a log fall down filled with shurikens. His hand reached up to a branch above him, it was too late to try another plan; she behind him again. Against the trunk of the tree, she stabbed him with a kunai in the side. The blade ripped into the body and separated the bugs and before she could stop, she cut a rope that the bug clone was hiding. She watched a net fall underneath her, they hadn't planned where she would attack. Two hands reached out behind the tree and grabbed her head and smashed it into the tree. Her paralysis didn't last long as she got a hold of one of the hands and pulled Shino on to the branch on to his back. She kneed over him with a foot on him pointing a kunai at him. She felt her head and her head protector was still there. Shino slowly reached for his head protector and removed it letting it fall to the ground. "Giving up?"  
  
"Why had he taken it off?" She thought again pondering his head protector made of bugs.   
  
"I got the location," Hinata said watching the head protector fall down the tree and into the light.  
  
"Let's go." Kiba responded.  
  
The forehead protector she had felt was had of bugs as Shino had replaced it. She got off him as they started to crawl on her head. With his arms raised to her, he released more bugs. She would have to get rid of them before she chased after Kiba and Hinata. Her speed as she ran to the river removed some of the bugs, but until she jumped into the water, they stayed on her.   
  
Shino rolled off the branch and landed on his feet next to the forehead protector. He tied it around head.   
  
A--------------------  
  
At a well that the location directed them, Kiba and Hinata waited for their instructor. Hinata was distant and she felt bad for taking a position away from Shino. "You know..." he was patient to get her full eye contact, "he has a great mind for strategy, next time he'll past." Kiba explained.   
  
Kurenai appeared in front of them. "You have successed because you worked as a team," she started. Shino slowly walked into the area and left her head protector with her. "You passed. As a team you must allow yourself as well as your teammates the chance to scarifice themself without dishonoring their intentions. If this was a real mission, Shino would have been killed if you helped him or not, so your duty was to stay alive and finish the mission without throwing your life away and stealing away his honourable decision. When you demostrate that you can throw away your need to be a ninja or to not interfere with others' choices to end their rank as a ninja, then you have the understanding of a ninja. You're dismissed. Tomorrow we start the missions."  
  
"I should thank Shino," she thought but he had already left.  
  
B----------------  
  
Team Ten had Ino, Shikamaru, and a chubby guy named Choji. Out in the open field their instuctor, Asuma stood with a smoke in his mouth. The three sat in a tree and Choji tried to keep quiet as he put his bandaided hand into a bag of chips. "Let's give up," Shikamaru suggested. Ino had a fantasy involing Sasuke. He had looked at her. "I love your long blonde hair." She heard Shikamaru's negative comments all around her: "Why bother trying. How troblemsome. Let's give up." They rang throughout her fantasy and Sasuke said, "but Shikamaru convinced you to give up being a ninja and I no longer like you."  
  
Ino grabbed Ino by his light grey vest. "Look," she pulled his dirty drowsy face to hers, "think of something fast, now!"  
  
He rested against the truck of the tree and thought with his hands pointing down and his fingers touching. He openned his eyes. Ino snapped her fingers and brighten up with a smile. "I'm too hungry to move," Choji said throwing some more chips in his mouth. Shikamaru gestured for her to come closer to him so he could whipser to her. With his hand to her ear, her smile fainted to a ghostly look.   
  
"That's suicide." She proclaimed.   
  
"If Shikamaru," Choji pointed out, "makes a plan, it will work."  
  
"Shit," Ino said as she put her hands together in front of her face to make a triangle. "Body replacement technique."  
  
She passed out and had control of Choji's body. Shikamaru picked her up and put her down on the ground. He looked up at Choji. "Now take all of his food and throw it down here."  
  
Ino had a hard time getting to all of the food; there were even candy bars hidden in holsters made for weapons. Quickly, Shikamaru removed his vest and wrapped all of the food in there and attacted it to Ino. "Okay, you can leave his body."  
  
Ino regained consciousness and started to run and Choji followed with a fire in his eyes. Behind him, Shikamaru also followed. Ino lead them into the field that Asuma stood in, and she threw the bag of food over him and then ran in a circular path to meet up with it. "So they found out how to get Choji to run." He commented ready for what he would suspect. "Shikamaru will try to use his shadow to get me, but he doesn't have much to work with to extend his shadow. It would have been better to have lured me into the forest. I don't have to worry about Ino since her technique would be too slow to get me."  
  
She stood behind him as they ran in the direction of Asuma. "Choji could use his multisize and meat tank jutsu, but he is not graceful with that."   
  
"Come on fat ass!" Ino yelled with joy. She pulled down a bottom eyelid with his finger and struck her tongue out at him. Choji stopped and Shikamaru stood a meter a head of him and strenched out his shadow. "It's not long by a long shot." The instructor recongized.   
  
Ino and Shikamaru were getting ready, this was going to hurt. "Multisize jutsu," Choji said and his proportions ballooned and his body elipsed the sun for Shikaramu's feet. His shadow strenched the extra meters to get to Asuma. Ino then used her body switch jutsu and caught him.  
  
"I see, he used Choji to expand his shadow." He thought as he tried to gain control of his body. It was hard since Shikamaru had him trapped in his shadow and Ino had taken control of his brain. "They are certainly suicidal."  
  
"Meat Tank!" Choji yelled and his limbs and head retreated into his body and started to spin. It rolled over Shikaramu, and under Ino's control, Asuma jumped out of the way. "You all pass!" He was forced to say. Choji continued rolling and trampled over the limp body of Ino. Choji stopped the jutsu stumbled on his feet.   
  
Ino returned to his body and Shikamaru returned to his senses; "What a hassle."  
  
Asuma gathered his team up. "Good work," he said in a deep voice. "Anyone willing to be crushed under the weight of a member of Akimichi for the good of the mission is a ninja by my standards. You have all passed. Missions begin tomorrow."  
  
"What I put up with for love?" Ino questioned.   
  
C---------------  
  
Naruto screamed and kicked tied up on the middle of three wooden posts. The ropes slackened and he was free. He turned around and saw Hinata who looked elsewhere. "Thanks Hinata!" He said passionately loud. "I passed my test, I'm going to be a ninja."  
  
"Ah," she sounded and looked for the words to say, "the test wasn't to untied yourself was it?"  
  
Naruto's shoulders dropped and he shook his head violently. "No, no." He pointed at himself with his thumb. "I was tied up to the post and Sakura fed me. It's called teamwork."  
  
"What a weird instructor," she thought, though she knew she had not done any more than he did to recieve her pass. "I knew you could do it."  
  
He laughed and rubbed his sleeve of his orange jump suit. He wondered about her team. "Hinata has strange problems remembering what she was talking about and drifts off. Kiba is also on her team, he's a big shot who thinks he can beat up everyone. There's Shino, too. What I know about him... he's on Hinata's team." He found it difficult to talk to anyone on team eight. His team however was balanced out as he had to deal with his rival Sasuke and the girl he had a crush on, Saruka. "How did you do?"  
  
"I passed too," she said it like a secret.   
  
-------- End of Chapter Two ------------  
  
Next Chapter: Tomorrow is the first mission. Though loose ends were tied up in this chapter, it only means more incidence will cause riffs next time. Both teams had good success, if you can count being run over by Choji success, unlike Naruto's team. Now that they have passed and on missions, what challenges will come up next. I don't know. But be ready for more super cunning tactics.  
  
Notes: I will rate this fanfiction from G to PG-13. I never thought it was G in the first place.   
  
Sorry for the filler with the InoShikaCho team. I know that Shino is a great perception for fighting, but I also like Shikamaru for the same reason. Maybe you can use the two fights to compare the two.   
  
Predictions: Right now, team eight has to do some low ranking missions, but I may or may not include some sort of twist to create some development like Naruto's mission to Wave Country. This team has already followed what development that Naruto's team did, so I wouldn't mind diverging from that pattern.   
  
Comments and suggestions are welcomed as long as they don't involve breaking the plot line of the anime. 


	3. Under Unfavourable Uprightness! Ultimat...

Bugs: Team Eight  
  
Chapter 3: The First Mission  
  
The two doors of a room in the Ninja Academy opened and Kakashi with his team seven walked out of the mission reception office. Outside, team eight and Kurenai watched them pass in the hall. Sasuke seemed indifferent compared to Naruto who had wide open pround eyes. Against the wall, they made room for the team, and then preceeded to enter.  
  
The first thing they saw was the banter hanging from the ceiling read in big read paint: "Everyone Do Your Best". "Kurenai reporting for duty," she said and raised her leeveless arm to salute the Hokage who sat with his pipe and wide and flat red cap. "What is our first mission?"  
  
Their old Academy teacher, Iruka in his teacher inform of a blue sweater and green ninja vest, handed Hokage a clip board. He read through the list. "An interesting mission I have found for you." Hokage put the clip board on the desk. "You are indeed luckly to be acquiring this mission. This will determine the outcome of a very important decision of a young lady." He took a puff from his pipe. "You are hired to attent a midnight madness sale at Sal's Gowns to pick up this wedding dress." He held up a picture to show everyone. A short stifled noise exploded from Shino and as everyone looked at him, he had his hand over his mouth that had a few bugs crawling on it. "I trust you have nothing more to add, Shino?"   
  
Iruka had busied himself with filing forms for accepted missions. "Pardon, Hokage," he showed him a piece of paper, "we have already hired out the two other rookie Genin teams to retreive the same dress for two different clients." The hokage smiled. "Should we hire them out to competing clients?"  
  
"Conflictation births oppurtunity. The teams that lose their clients the dress, as I see fit, must work off their failure doing overtime chores cleaning the academy for a week." The Hokage put down four copies of the picture on the desk. "Pick these up, they have the information you will need. You will have to meet with your client to pick up the money."  
  
Outside the Academy, Kurenai had them sitting on a stone bench. "What is going to win as this mission is careful planning. I have assigned all of you tasks based on your strenghts and weaknesses." From under her broad white narrow black striped sash that went around her waist, she pulled out money and gave it to Hinata. "My neighbour has a small child who fancies a new toy that will be selling out as its unloaded. He has spoken about the toy for a week. Go to the toy store and buy one of each colour. Don't be afraid to be offensive in purchasing it; the kids will give you little mercy as well. Kiba, you collect the money from our client, her address is on the back. And Shino, give our team some mystery. We will join up at the store's location at 15 minutes before the store opens. Dismissed."  
  
A--------------------   
  
"Oh," a child ran ahead of Hinata in the school and bumped her away from his path. There was no need to have a high perception of other people's emotions; the kids were gathering around the booth that was at the back of the store guarded by three ninjas. She thought, "What jobs don't ninja's do?" But they were having difficulties as the kids bit and kick them and they did not have the hearts to use enough force. She knew they would have concern with using force on her however, she was a foot taller than the next tallest kid. A boy in a cape and a grey helmet that had a hole at the top to let his brown hair sprout out ran in the store with a chipped tooth smile. Hinata knew he, Konohamaru, the grandson of the Hokage. "At least he didn't have that fake cardboard box with him."  
  
The clerk finished putting the last toy on the shelf, and the ninjas left prematurely before the clerk could have left himself. Caught in the rush, he yelled. "I can do this," she marched into the frenzy. Fire crackers exploded in the crowd, and she thought about tonight. "Do people grow up, or do their price list get more expensive?"  
  
She sat on the ground near the exit and saw that every colour was accounted for in the identical toy set. Standing, she picked up the bag and walked back home. Along the way, she saw a red hair girl crying near a fence. Her face was in her hands. "Can I help?" Hinata asked. "Tell me your problem."  
  
"She stole my doll," she snobbed.   
  
"Here," Hinata gave her the bag of toys. The girl said thank you and smiled.   
  
B--------------------  
  
At the ramen shop, Naruto sat on a stool and put away his second bowl. Shino sat next to him and put down the picture of the dress. "Hmm?" Naruto sucked in the noodles hanging from his mouth. He adjusted the picture to properly face Naruto and pointed at it with his index finger. "Trying to be too cool for words? How lame." Naruto thought. "I'm not helping."   
  
A waitress came up to Naruto. "I'm not giving you any more until you pay some money, Naruto."   
  
Naruto patted down his pockets and sneered to the waitress a few times. Shino picked up the picture and placed it between Naruto and his ramen. "Not know!" Naruto paniced. Shino put the picture down and coughed into his fist to get the waitresses attention. He then pointed in Naruto's ramen that had a bug in it.   
  
"Sorry, I didn't see that bug in there." The waitress said and put down a bowl in front of Naruto. "Those three were on us."  
  
Naruto smiled and dug in to his favourite cup ramen, the free type. He gladly put down his own copy of the picture with his clients name on it. Shino left. "That guy isn't so bad." Then Naruto yelled to find that the picture was missing. He picked up the bowl and got off the chair.   
  
"Hey," the cook said, "you can't take that bowl with you."  
  
He had a decision to do something or eat ramen; Shino was free to go.  
  
C-----------------  
  
Kiba rang the door bell and the client Ms. Chan opened the door. "Ah, the ninja I hired. I was told you would arrive, but I was never told late." She put her hand out to stop him from entering. "I don't want dirty pets in my house." Kiba dropped his jaw but went no further. He put Akamaru on the ground from his head and entered. "I'll get the check ready."  
  
Kiba waited in the front entrance and looked back at the door which Akamaru pawed. He heard her voice and turned around to see her at a table writing the check. "I have my own marriage planned out, now I just have the small details to attent to like the groom." She ripped the check from the book and walked over to him. "Here you go, don't fail me."  
  
The door slammed behind him and his dog barked. He took a bee out of his pocket and held it up to his face. "If it wasn't for the punishment, I would lose on purpose." Kiba released the bee and away it flew.  
  
D----------------  
  
Shikamaru sat at his favourite board table and looked up at the clouds. "We're going to lose." He said. His chair dropped to all of its legs and Shino joined him. On the board was the picture of the dress. "Hey, do you want to play."  
  
Shino held his hands over the board and bugs fell onto his pieces. "You control your bugs with you mind, don't you? Even if I used my shadow intimation jutsu on you, you could still make your moves with your mind." Shikamaru concluded. "Then it would be a fair game." He rested his head in his hand. "If I win, you help my team win the mission. I don't want to lose this mission."  
  
He looked away from Shikamaru. "It's not the punishment. I'm thinking about the client. It would be a shame if she didn't get it."  
  
A bee flew on Shino's collor and Shino took the picture off the table and ripped it in two. He held his hand out to Shikamaru and was handed the picture. "Bye," Shikamaru said.  
  
E----------------   
  
Team eight observed the mass of people already crowding the door to the bridal store. On a three story building, they had a minute before the doors opened. Looking over the red clay shingles of the ledge of the roof, Kurenai nodded to her students and had a problem moving. "Shino," she shouted to him, "use your bugs to find the person using this technique on us."  
  
Shino transformed into Shikamura who guided them to bit on their fist to keep them from talking. Kakashi perched on the ledge and looked at the team. "The way I see it; your team has been dealt with, and the other team has one less member. Bye." And he left.  
  
"How did you avoid being smelt?" Kiba asked Shikamura and bugs started to crawl out from his vest.  
  
"Treachery," Kurenai said.  
  
Sasuke parted some wedding dresses then adjusted his headset's mircophone to his mouth, "The store must have hid it."  
  
Naruto and Sakura took the outside lanes of the store and acknowledged the message. Turning her head side to side, Sakura was stopped by Shino who appeared in her way. She jumped back a bit and entered a fighting stance, "Why him?" she asked softly. She had a defensive stance and distance to face off against this guy she considered to be creepy. Her body shook once and she stood up and gave Shino the peace sign. Behind her, Choji dragged a unconscious Ino away from the crowd and started looking for the dress.  
  
With his legs wide opened and his knees bent, Naruto had a hand under his short spiky blond hair. He searched and found Sakura who looked down at the floor and rubbing her arm. She walked up to him slowly. "Sakura?" Naruto asked, "aren't you suppose to be looking for the dress."  
  
She looked up to him, "I have something to tell you, but I can't find the words."  
  
From the lane that Sakura was designed to search, Shino jumped over the rack and landed in front of Sasuke. He then took his hands out of his pockets and moved them away from his body with spread fingers. Some bones cracked. "Shino." Sasake said. "I saw you spying on our client. I think you're taking this mission too seriously for my liking, however, I wouldn't let anyone get in my way."  
  
Sasuke charged then dropped to his right knee to evade a high right hook and removed a kunai from a pouch on his white shorts to hold in his right hand. From above, a quick jab came but Sasuke caught Shino's left hand aimed at his face. Under Shino's left sleeve, a kunai emerged from the darkness and Sasuke had to throw the kunai that he held to intercept it. The projectile Sasuke threw spun back to where Sasuke threw it, while Shino's had acquired the previous direction of Sasuke's.   
  
He was about to retreive his own kunai but Shino reached down for it allowing Sasuke to jump for Shino's kunai and gain the high advantage. Shino was lying on the ground with a kunai ready to throw as Sasuke's fingers touched the loop at the end of the one for which he was jumping. A slanted line glitter in Sasuke's eye near the metal loop and the tranjectory headed off course out of his reach. Sasuke looked back to Shino and on sight of an upcoming kunai, he crossed his forearms in front of his chest and took it.   
  
"What devices are hidden on Shino?" Sasuke landed and removed the blade. He watched as the kunai that got away from him started to return into Shino's sleeve. Sasuke evaluted his opponents tactics in his head: "When the two kunais spun off each other, he went for the one that had appeared to have the least advantage. This lead me to think that I could benfit from his mistake and he could predict this reflex and set a trap like tying a string to it. Anyways, he's hiding something from me." Sasuke smirked and watched the fuse go out and set off the bags of explosive powder on the left pocket of Shino's shirt. He stumbled to the right and felt a rack of wedding dresses. There wasn't much light, and his sun glasses dimmed whatever light could reach under the dresses. He could see Sasuke over top of him, holding up a blade ready to strike. Tentively bugs started to crawl from him.  
  
Suddenly, a blue gloved hand reached in onto Sasuke's shoulders and pulled him out of the rack. "Hey," Kakashi said, "playtime's over, Asuma's team purchased the dress."   
  
F--------------------  
  
Team eight and team seven with their instructors grouped in front of Hokage in the Academy. "There had to be two teams to fail their mission," the Hokage started. Sasuke looked over at Shino and jerked his head back angerily when Shino did not respond. The coldness was a characteristic that he wanted to inflict on people. "As for the punishment..."  
  
"Hokage..." Kurenai was interupted.  
  
"The punishment isn't to be given to them," said Shino, and the Hokage dropped his pipe from his mouth and Iruka got off his chair and hit his fist on the table.   
  
"Hokage will not be told what to do." Iruka aggravated voice.  
  
Shino reflected on his thoughts and adjusted his glasses. He continued in his slow clear voice, "I have made the punishment my own and it is I to whom it will be given. What keeps their reach from the punishment that is mine was my intention and action that foiled the plans of both team seven and eight. With Shikamaru who did no wrong to accomplish what was best for his team, we planned to make positive his team's success." He told another break. "In Buddha's way, for them to take what is not intented for them would disturb their quietness."  
  
"You idiot," Naruto yelled with a pointed finger at Shino. Kakashi hit him over the head.   
  
"Quiet. When more than two opposing sides are facing each other, diplomacy is logical to get rid of common enemies. You were busy talking to Sakura's possessed body instead of helping your teammates." Kakashi explained. "However, diplomacy that is too unbalanced is treason."  
  
"Correct," Hokage spoke, "Aburame Shino, you have betrayed your teammates and were unethical in diplomacy. You will take everyone's punishment cleaning for six weeks. Do you have anything further to explain?" What the Hokage got was nothing. "Then I take your silence as a no."  
  
G------------------  
  
The next day, after the academy was let out, Shino was raking leafs in the back. His destruction bugs were working efficiently breaking down the leafs. "Hey," Shikamaru said walking over a line of bugs, "why didn't you tell the old man about my client?"  
  
"What could I have said?" Shino said, "I never met up with your client. I just I took your word that your client deserved the dress."  
  
"Huh?" Shikamaru had his hand on the back of his head.  
  
"It would be too troblemsome to not act like you were telling the truth." Shino pointed out having only known about the other two clients.  
  
"You trust me, Shino?"  
  
"I didn't believe that there would be any worst clients than the two I saw. One was rude and had no partner, while the other was marry for money." Then Shino added. "Plus if you were willing to trust me and endure having yourself covered with my destruction bugs, I couldn't doubt you."   
  
"Thanks," Shikamaru said in his normal dull voice.  
  
-------- End of Chapter Three ------------  
  
Next Chapter: The first mission is completed, but the events are not going to be forgot. Since Shino has finally said his mouth full, Hinata will have the spotlight next time. Considered to be a dead end in her family what drives her to continue to being a ninja? More responsibility are coming her way as she tries to work in a team of that she is not sure.   
  
Notes: Hey, for what other than a good reason who you have yourself covered in destruction bugs?   
  
Predictions: Something's bound to come up. I just don't know.  
  
comments and suggestions are welcomed as long as you know the difference between there, their, and they're. 


	4. Hinata Has a Heartfelt Hardship

I Go Blind: Team Eight  
  
Chapter 4: The Hyuuga's Estate  
  
In the evening, Hinata lugged a bag over her shoulder and walked parallel to the wall of the Hyuuga's Estate. The air was calm and clean. She let herself in at the wooden front gates and entered the small residence filled with guard houses near the walls, buildings for maintance and cooking the next closest and the main living quarters in the centre that expanded between maintance buildings.   
  
Hinata entered her room, dropped her bag on the floor and went to her bed in the centre of her room. With her legs crossed promting up a supporting a writing pad and her journal. Before starting she put her hands in front of her face, "Byakugan," her eyes cracked. Reaching behind herself, she picked up a remote and turned on the television behind her. She put her pencil on the paper then her eyes opened wide and she threw her hands up as well as her pencil. She saw her favourite music video come on the air and then she smiled and closed her eyes just for the feeling; she could still see everything. With her index fingers pointed up she swayed side to side. She sung along: "Little child did you know that's there's a light/ And it's going to shine right through your eyes/ What do you think that life is like/ Everytime I look at you I go blind/ I go blind. Whooo!" She threw her hands up in the air. Picking up her pencil, she nodded along to the rest of the song: "I don't know why Shino decided to help the other team out; he didn't tell anyone. I know it was a simple mission, but can I feel safe being on his team? Everytime he has defined himself as someone I admire or detest, he does the opposite and remains a mystery."   
  
"As a member on the team, I feel that I've hadn't done anything. I feel that a part of reason is that Shino has kept me outside his decisions that affect the whole team. How I wish to be teamed with Naruto. He is a ninja I could cheer on."  
  
There was a door at the door.  
  
"Come in Kiba," she saw, next to everything, Kiba and Akamaru open the door, "hi."  
  
"Hinata?" He tried to get her attention but to him she appeared to only look at her journal. He waved his hand and she waved hers back making him feel foolish. "Oh, your Byakugan. It makes you look like you're not mindful to other people around you."  
  
"Ah, sorry," she spoke and ended her multitasking. "Why are you here?" She had looked at his arms, elbows out and hands at his waist but she asked. To herself: "I had a hard day, how can he want to train?"  
  
"It's been a hard day," Kiba looked at Akamaru who barked, "and that is a main reason for not training. But common people are reasonable, and that means that super strong ninjas must be totally demented and devoid of all rational thought." He flashed his teeth in a huge grin.   
  
They loosened up in the dojo. When Hinata used her Byakugan and stood in wide base with her palms facing him, one in front of her and the other down at her waist, Kiba knew she was ready. When she blocked a kick coming for her head, she hadn't taken the impact but pushed off of his leg. Her body casted to his right and the power that concentrated on her left hand spread through her limber body. Once her foot hit the ground, she regained her limbs one by one in a fluid motion back to her original stance. The next move to control was another charge with clawed hands retracted. His sharp nails would prevent her from blocking directly with her open palm method, so she knew to dodge the attacks. And though she would have known to attack when she made an opening, it was never taken.  
  
A-------------------  
  
Under a tree near the academy, team eight waited for their instructor, Kurenai. Hinata could tell that Shino who sat against the trunk of the tree was tired. Since their first mission failure, they had accomplished three other missions in that they achieved success. "The missions are so boring!" To whom Kiba shout was indefinite. He stomped his feet on the ground as he walked in a small circle. He turned around and pointed at some smoke that departed to reveal their young black haired instructor. "I want a mission to satsify my talent."  
  
She held forward a scroll in her left bandaided hand. The bandaids wrapped up her sleeveless arm to her elbow. "Look." The wooden middle of the scroll rolled down and with a flick of the wrist, the scroll rolled back up to its original state. "Interesting trick, huh?"   
  
"What the hell was that?" Kiba yelled.   
  
"Now a days, Kakashi told me there would be one of you in every group," she lamented. "Listen, I have rid you of your mundane errand for today so I could take care of a personal mission. I would advise you to use this time for training. You're dismissed. Tomorrow we'll return to business."  
  
When Kurenai abandoned them to their way, Hinata spoke: "Personal? What does she mean?"  
  
Kiba shrugged. Shino put his arms behind himself and raised against the tree. When he put his hands in his pockets, bugs overflood them and then crawl up this sleeves. "Hinata, be at ease," which was harder for her to do now that it was first time for Shino speaking directly to her, "she tones down her own troubles to be polite, because neither are we fittingly able or equally wise to help her." Off Shino was after a wave and final word : "Adiós."  
  
"Chingate, wuss!" Kiba yelled so that Shino could hear but didn't respond. A cool wind caused Hinata to clutch her fingers into her white soft cuffs of her jacket. Conflict was not taken well by Hinata, who had to live with the hostility in her own family. The conflict between Kiba and Shino was most complex compared to others since she had a problem: she knew what people where thinking, as the ability was natural in her family then refined through practice, but Shino was mysterious and untalkative that required weak speculations and Kiba acted crazy. "Let's go Akamaru."  
  
B----------------  
  
A rumour spread between high ranking ninjas in the hidden leaf village. They recorded illegal practices outside the village. Scouts reported sightings of rituals operated under the full moon. Lured with the promise to free the body of diease, parents brought their sick children to clearings in the forest to the sight recommended by a travelling loner. The parents put their sick children in the corpses of animals. In the middle, two hole were dug and filled with blood from a child of each sex picked from the group. The boy and girl were the scarifice. Then the collection of tears from the parents filled the morning of the ritual. Many had to whip themselves or imagine that their child would be the one picked. The tears were mixed with the blood of the scarifices and dirt to create the smell of decomposed flesh that possessed the body. When the sun hit the openning, the loner removed two wrist bands covered with a jutsu that covered the whole forearm. There was no skin covering the forearms. Strains of black and green muscule hung loose. Maggots groveled on their banquet. The loner plunged both arms into the mixture of blood, tears and dirt. The animals started to grow maggots. The children of all ages froze in fear as the magots unraveled the flesh of the animal to its bone. Next they entered the kids. When the irovy larvas left, the tumors were gone, paralysis moved on, and all the infections and disabilities were gone. So too was the loner, which was a good thing.  
  
C---------------  
  
Kurenai had taken the rumours personally. "I've just recently became a jounin," she reminded herself though no one brought it up to her, "there's no order in investigating this. But I do have an order to train my team."  
  
She looked at the bones of a bear. A jutsu was written underneath the bones that lay separate as the tenants were also digusted. From what was a clearing of dirt were no grass grew, buds sprouted everywhere in this newly fertile land. Bending down and spreading the sprouts out of the way, she recognized a jutsu written underneath the bones. Around fifty unique set of bones from animals to fit children from the ages of her own students to enfants. "If it saved the lives of 50 children," she wondered, "could the scarifice of two sick children be ignored?"  
  
On to the closest village, she smiled to a young boy who steered an ox with a plow. He stopped out of courtesy and responded back with a smile that went against the feelings of his tired body. "Hello," she walked over to the fence of light brown logs, "are there any adults I can speak to?" He pointed over at a front porch with old white flanked paint. On the porch sat an elderly grey haired man. "Thank you."  
  
Her foot step creeked on the first step and the man awoke. "Good day," he sounded cranky but as with everyone, expect Shino as she reflected, he was able to add some flavorful high pitch into his voice to make it cheerful. His face was narrow at the top as the wrinkles pulled what would have been a round plumb face into an squash.   
  
"Hi," she said then got to business, "what do you know about the ritual to cure sick children?"  
  
"What is natural is strange to others. Most people don't want to talk about it. It cured by grandson, and that is worthy of a conversation. It was a tragedy that two children being pulled away from their family, but they were dead any other way. The loner shoulders a lot of pain from what I can tell. From the traveller to go on to heal all the sick children, and only ask that two remain as vessels..."  
  
"Vessels, I thought they were killed."  
  
"They aren't alive either, because they are the ones that carry a curse for the rest of them. There is lore about people doing what that person did. At times before medical advantments, people didn't live as long but they were healthy. The cures were natural so the dieases were natural. Now that we have gotten away for the healing found in living things, we have new dieases that are taking over since children aren't catching anything small for them to learn to fight stronger dieases. A pure shame, I find it."  
  
"And the myth about that healer?"  
  
"Yes, healers did rituals like that, if only more disgusting. Even the best of the fields had to slaughter the whole family including extended members and friends to get rid of a hang nail. Better that the finger be cut off completely, and even a hand would do since no one would clap for those healers. Today, most don't want to talk about it. They get upset and the children who he saves end up with bad memories and aren't thankful. To myself, it is almost too good to be true."  
  
"I feel the same way," she agreed. "The techniques were certainly from a ninja, but it is rare these days to encounter an unknown ninja. From the field of genetics, we know what breeding is needed to create a ninja."  
  
She had already lost the old man's attention.   
  
D---------------   
  
Shino picked a purple carnation from a white bucket. "What a waste." He remarked and put the cut flower back in its place. His pet bee went ahead of him to the rooted flowers. "You're talked!" Ino chuckled behind the counter. "And I thought you were the Ino with the," she placed a finger over her lips and clutched her teeth to make the sound, "sh."   
  
Not a heartbeat after gestured him to be quiet, he added, "it happens."  
  
"Why don't you take your glasses off to see the colours better?" Ino steped behind the counter and watched the bee jump flower to flower. He touched the large red flower of the tuberous. Long spaded leafs with thick stems had no lift. "Flowers of the Begonia type means beware. Stop buying all of the grandmother and antisocial plants."  
  
"How about that one," Shino pointed to a large box sprewing with ice white flowers. "I can put the candytufts outside my room to grow."  
  
"Those mean indifferent, Shino!" It didn't take much to annoy Ino. "You need a flower of love." She slid down the racks of flowers and on the top ledge a dark leafed plant shrub too immature to flower widen her eyes. "Yes. This Cape Jasmine is for you. She got the nearest stool and brought it down."  
  
"Secret love." Shino said as he told it.   
  
"Don't read anything into it." Ino warned him. "Now, when these start to flower, they will produce white flowers. If you can make them grow, you can cut them and give them to a girl your admire. Insects will be your main concern to keep this plant heathy."  
  
"No they wouldn't." He said. They moved to the counter so he could pay.  
  
"Are you going to invite me one day to your garden?" She took his money and gave him back the change.  
  
"In two days I will return to pick up blood meal and fertilizer so afterwards I can plant this." Shino took the brown paper bag and held it by its yard handles. "If you're not busy, your wisdom can help me find a place for it. So long."  
  
E---------------  
  
Kiba and Hinata practiced on wooden crosses that had tough padding to resemble parts of the human body. The sense of fear in Hinata smelt like fear he needed to defeat. He released one last punch that hit in the chest and broke the beam in half. His dog saw this lack of respect Kiba gave the apparatus and pissed on the lower portion as Kiba's eyes hunted for what upset Hinata. He saw the threat and snatched it. "Hey you, overflowing crud bucket, did you grow your hair that way as a bet?" He pointed and barked to a boy in a light grey short sleeve jacket with long black hair. "You're making my friend feel unpleasant so take off quickly like any senible guy would to your clothes, fudgy."  
  
Hinata saw the coolness of the intruder leave. His face cringed before he retorted, in a normal conversational voice, "Son of a bitch."  
  
Akamaru jumped on Kiba's back. They posed their with their claws digging. Kiba's back arched as his fingernails grew and his teeth grew fangs. "Quadraped no Jutsu!" His transformation was completed. His breathing became heavier and good eyes could have seen some form trailing over the sharper teeth. "Beast-Human Clone!" Akamaru took the same form as he did.   
  
Hinata thought and bit on her finger. She could only think, "Careful, Neji's my cousin."   
  
-------- End of Chapter Three ------------   
  
Next Chapter: The conclusion of the fight between Kiba and Neji. Oh, I can't forget Akamaru. On a less exciting note, will Ino help Shino plant his Cape Jasmine? It needs a correct about a shade and watering. And in accordance with everything else, Kurenai's personal mission is incomplete as well. It was almost like I cut the chapter short so I could update my fanfiction.   
  
Notes: Hinata was listening to the song, "I Go Blind" by 54-40. It was covered by Howie and the Blowfish.   
  
When Shino said "adiós", Kiba had his own spanish word "chingate". In honour of weird subbing that has the character saying weird things like "Bitch, I'm Rick James.", "chingate means fuck you. What is this south park?  
  
I have put the focus on Hinata. Dah, another quiet character. Kurenai will also get more time to shine.  
  
Predictions: The plot of the next few chapters devoted to Hinata are already planned out, but I don't know where Shino's mad skills in gardening will go. There is more danger and the only way to survive will be to develope into a stronger team. Take this selection to be equivalent to team seven's (Kakashi, Naruto, Sasuke, and so forth) encounter with Zabuza. When Kiba gets his time, well, things will have to go further than that.   
  
Maggots? Skinless arms? Cursed children? Do you dare read on?  
  
Comments and suggestions are welcomed as long as you can stand on one leg, touch your nose with your eyes close while giving the alphabet backwards. 


	5. A Slap, Smile and Super Soft Shells!

I Go Blind: Team Eight  
  
Chapter 5: A Slap, Smile and Some Soft Shells!   
  
Neji stepped back with one foot and bent his knees. His eyes cracked and veins around his eyes filled with charka. Kiba recognized the stance as the same one as Hinata's, but he also knew the fear she had of him. The pair dug into the ground with their sharp claws then separated to attack Neji from his sides. Neji put his hands to his sides at the last moment of their approach and made contact with their claw. He fell backwards and swirled to direct the two Kiba's in opposite directions. One flew over him and threw a kunai at Neji's back. He dodge this by pushing a palm off the Kiba who was directed under him and spinning into a handstand. The blade when into the back of the Kiba who yelled before reverting back into Akamaru. Neji's long back hair stopped gyrating and he tumbled to his feet. When Kiba rolled on the ground he saw his dog with a blade in his back. He had not have the time to respond to Neji who stood behind him. Neji reached out with two fingers and pitched Kiba's lower neck sending charka to his brain. Kiba lost focus in his eyes and fell to the ground.   
  
  
  
Hinata had run to Akamaru and was now on the ground with a flask in her hand and removing the kunai. Neji relaxed his face and his eye sight returned to normal. An easygoing whistling carrying Bach's Bouree caught Neji and Hinata's attention and they looked over to a bush from where Shino emerged with a brown paper bag. The tune halted and he looked back at them. She was shocked when he proceeded to carry on with the tune and go on his way.   
  
"You team lacks direction. A ninja who is ill-tempered will lead his squad to unfavourable trouble. Likewise, the self serving ninja causes distrust in his group. Your vices will also bring down the group." He said in a cold stren voice to Hinata who trembled over Akamaru. When he looked back at Kiba, he found a log. His focus snapped to Hinata who evaporated in smoke. Neji mummbled and left.  
  
  
  
The wound in Akamura was tended to and wrapped in bandaids. He slumped in Hinata's embrance. Team eight had retreated into the bushes. "Is Kiba," Hinata paused, "going to be okay?"  
  
"Yeah," Shino held a single destruction bug on his finger. He brought his hand and the bug to Kiba's face who was lying on the ground. The bug leaped off of Shino and onto Kiba were it entered through the nose. "The extra chakra flowing through his system will have to be drained to prevent futher damage."  
  
He picked up his brown paper bag and continued on his way home. Before he got to the ditch between the road and the forest, Shino felt a hand tighten around his wrist. He was pulled around to where he came. Hinata raised her hand and slapped him across the face. "NO!" She commanded. He turned his head to Hinata. His glasses had snapped in the middle of the temple and they swung to the side of the unbroken temple. Her white eyes were a frozen perfection. "You will pick up Kiba and take him to the hospital. He and Akaramu are members of our team." She choked when a stream of tears poured down her face but then her voice increased in passion. "We destined to give it our all for our team."  
  
She walked back and then turned around to say in a clear confident voice, "I'm sorry; I was not myself."  
  
"I understand and am relieved," he removed the glasses from his bowl of a collar. "'Little by little, moment by moment, a wise man should cleanse himself of blemishes, like a smith purifying silver.'- The Dhammapada, Verse 239. I'm indebted to you." With two fingers he pulled down his collar down to his chest. A slow smile creeped on his face. "Thank you."  
  
A-------------------  
  
Hinata had spent the night with Akamaru in her arms in a chair next to Kiba's bed. As soon as the sunlight entered the room, she awoke with the warm body against her chest. Akamaru yawned, quickly regained his vitality and struggled in Hinata's arms to lick her face. She carefully put him down and he jumped on Kiba's bed and barked at him. "Akamaru." Hinata said discordantly. Kiba stirred and held out a hand to block the sun from his eyes.   
  
"Akamaru!" He got up and his pet rolled down his chest to his lap. He had a large smile and held the dog to his chest. "I'm so sorry."  
  
"Kiba." Hinata said softly. Kiba released Akamaru then put his hands behind his head.   
  
"Hinata, you're alright."   
  
In the doorway, Kurenai appeared in the door. "Training - now - run," she stated sincerely sounding each out bluntly. Kiba rolled out of bed and put on his shoes. In no time, he was out the door into the hallway with Akamaru following. Kurenai looked at Hinata who had yet moved. "NOW!"  
  
Hinata bolted out of the room and caught up to Kiba. "Are you alright?" She asked short of breath.  
  
"Yeah," he opened the main door of the hospital. When they got to a main road, Shino passed by them with his hands in his pockets. "Hey, wait up!"  
  
B-------------------  
  
They arrived exhausted bending over to take rough breaths. They detected three objects thrown at their direction in a frontal assault. Shino, who still had his hands in his pocket, side stepped the projectile. Hinata caught the object in two hands and heard a splat. The one heading for Kiba was intercepted by Akamaru who bit down on it. Two more objects arrived. It hit Shino in the face and shattered. He felt his face that was covered in a sticky substance. Kiba also had little time to react for the second one heading for him and as he tried to block his face, the object splash in his hand and did not stop the yellow sludge from hitting his face. Hinata openned her hands. "An egg?"  
  
"Correct," Kurenai held a woven basket of eggs. "Today, I'm going to train you on how to control your chakra output. When you can catch these eggs without breaking them, then you will know how to adapt your chakra to adequate levels." Shino removed his glasses and wiped his face on his long sleeve. "If you master your chakra with my egg training, then you will be allowed to come with me on a mission that I promise will push your skills to the limit."  
  
"Yahoo!" Kiba yelled. She picked at egg out of the basket and threw it. The egg broke in his palm.  
  
"My skills to the limit?" Hinata commented and had an egg thrown at her. When her hand made contact with the egg, she withdrew her hand and shook it. The egg fell to the ground and cracked.  
  
"This mission would not be personal, would it?" Shino removed a hand from his pocket and caught a egg in his sleeve. He turned up his hand and a group of bugs carried it out intact. "In a mission, we may have to exchange items with each other quick enough to avoid detection from the enemy. Plainly, if the object is not caught whole, the mission may turn out to be a failure." He explained. "By judging the speed of the egg, I believe that my assumption was true and this is a personal mission without the authority of Hokage. I do not agree to come on this personal mission unless my teammates decide to go."  
  
"Who has determined you are even good enough to come?" Kurenai said.   
  
"I did. I am good enough to be where my teammates need me." He answered.   
  
Hinata snapped into action. She threw her arm forward and allowed the egg to roll over her sleeve. She took a step back to give the egg more to slide over as it passed over her back to her other arm. With a flick of the wrist, the egg went over her arm and to the front where her hand was waiting. The egg decreased with the contact and she caught it.   
  
Another egg flew. Kiba grabbed onto his hood and pulled it back off his head. He reflected on how Neji's hair spun when he twisted into the handstand. The hood became a net as he spun. When he stopped spinning, Akamaru jumped on Kiba's head and brought the egg out in his mouth. He dropped in it in Kiba's hand and barked. "Good work, Akamaru."  
  
"I see you have found unique ways of avoiding the task completely." Kurenai said. "This time, let's do it right."  
  
C-------------------   
  
Dry crusty yoke covered Hinata and Kiba's face and clothes. Hinata looked at Kiba who lay waste to another egg. "Kiba keeps on using too much charka in his hands and breaks the egg. I am being too soft and hurting my hand so I can't keep hold of the egg." She contemplated in her mind. Her eyes shift and narrowed to Shino who has nothing but a single stain on his sleeve. "Shino keeps on dodging the eggs or cheating. He is making an effort this time not to be involved in training."  
  
  
  
"This should trick Shino," the instructor thought. She pulled out a kunai and threw it at Hinata. With the kunai approaching too fast, she ducked and closed her eyes. When she opened her eyes, she was behind a grey jacket. Shino had stepped in front of her.   
  
"Shino!" She cried and looked around him. The kunai had not hit him, yet he had not got it. In fact, no kunai had been thrown. What he did hold in his hand was an egg.   
  
"You've been holding out on us, Shino." Kurenai smiled a bit. "I threw an egg disguised as a kunai and you went for it. When you discovered it was an egg, you weren't able to dodge it and had to catch it." Her smile disappeared. "So you would have me believe. I really didn't know you were able to cheat that well. You knew that Hinata ducked so you didn't have to catch the egg but dodged it and placed the egg you had caught in your sleeve on your third throw."   
  
Kiba looked behind Shino and in the direction the egg should have continued. "Wait, why don't I see any place were the egg should have landed?"  
  
"Good question," she took Hinata's hand and unfulred her fist that held a complete egg. "Hinata caught it."  
  
"But.. but," she blurted, "I didn't feel anything."  
  
"Your hands completely numb," she held her hand, "and broken. Congratulations, you made it to the second part. Head with me. Kiba and Shino, throw eggs to eachother. I'll come back soon and give you one more chance."  
  
When the two girls left, Kiba turned to Shino, "I never thought of you as a cheater."  
  
Shino nodded.   
  
D-------------------   
  
  
  
Kurenai and Hinata stood in front of a line of eggs. "The hardest place to form charka is in the feet. If you can walk on the eggs without breaking them, then you will have perfect control over your chakra." Kurenai slowly walked across the line of eggs and got to the end. She turned around to Hinata. "Now you try."  
  
Her first step crushed the egg. "I can't do this."  
  
"I don't want to hear feelings. Keep on task."   
  
Hinata took another step and smashed the next egg. The egg after that was able to hold her to break the next one. She cracked a few eggs but at the end she had mastered the training. She stood at the end and could not face her instructor. "Good work," Kurenai said and headed back with Hinata. The boys were tossing an egg back and forth.   
  
"We're ready!" Kiba declared. She took two eggs and threw them. They were both able to catch the eggs without breaking them.   
  
"You're dismissed." She said. "Practice running up trees with only using your feet. Tomorrow you'll have a second test and if you pass it, I'll allow you to come with me on my mission."  
  
E-------------------  
  
The night before the mission, Kiba rummaged the pile of clothing that lied on his bedroom floor. His dog leaped out from underneath a grey overcoat and barked to indicate that he found two soldier pills. Kiba grabbed and placed them in his pocket. He rubbed his Akamaru's head. "Good boy!"  
  
He rested in the heaps of twisting blankets that were on his bed. "Hah! We are going to haul ass tomorrow." He spoke to his dog who put his chubby head on the edge of his woven basket. "Hinata and Shino are going to recognized why I'm the leader of this group. You're second in command, Akamaru. If the team goes down, I'm blaming you." He turned around and pointed at his dog who whimpered. Kiba rolled to his back. "Don't go soft on me, Akamaru. You should have stood up for yourself."  
  
"Hinata's a nice girl isn't she? Dislikes Naruto and Shino, what more can a man ask of a woman?" Akamaru growled. "Yes, she is going to have to like dogs too."  
  
F-------------------   
  
Glowbugs filled the Shino's room and gave it light. On the floor of grass two unfolded scrolls extended with one tarantula and four lack widows crawled on the paper of each. The scrolls rolled up when he started to perform hand signals. When the rolled up all the way, Shino bent down and wrapped a sticker to hold the paper. The scrolls went into his pocket.   
  
"Asian Mustard and Black Widow protect me." He said.  
  
G-------------------  
  
Hinata walked in the dark alleys of her estate. "Hinata," her father, Hiashi, said. He stood in a simple dark purple robe, and walked along a small stone layered with his hands behind his back. His hair covered his back in a black veil. "Hinata, what are you hiding from your father?"  
  
She jumped and then looked towards her father. She responded in her normally quite voice: "I don't know what you're saying."  
  
He grumble and closed his large moon eyes. "Yes, I understand. It's about the near future."  
  
"The future?"  
  
"You will kill an enemy adversary soon." He predicted. Hinata stepped back and her bear kneel hit a cold rock. She fell backwards and sunk to the hard dirt ground. His eyes averted from the scene from that Hinata frantically fleed.   
  
-------- End of Chapter Five ------------   
  
Next Chapter: The mission is happing next morning and each genin has something to bring. Shino is bring along some super spider, Kiba has his soldier pills and Hinata will have to deal with the idea that she may have to kill a person. The resolution is drawing near.   
  
Notes: You can consider this to be the second part of the last chapter.   
  
Predictions: Should I let Hiashi fill this in?   
  
Comments and suggestions are welcomed as long as eggs are good for your health. Aren't they? I'm a bit confused on the matter. 


	6. The Lonely Lull of Longetvity, The Loner...

I Go Blind: Team Eight  
  
Chapter Six: The Loner Lies Low, The Lonely Lull of Longevity!  
  
Listening to the songs of the birds, Hinata lied on a blanket with her round chin reposed in her crossed arms. Beside her sat Kurenai with her knees to her chest and arms hugging her legs. A leaf fell on her hand. She peered up and saw Shino standing upside down on a branch with The Art of War in his hand. "Shino," he dropped off from the branch and landed close to the blanket, "why don't you join us?" She patted the blanket.  
  
"Another time, prehaps," Shino flipped the page, "I'm too dirty at this moment."  
  
A small bark preceeded the arrival of Kiba and Akamaru. A cloud of dust stalked them and the first thing they did was to roll over the blanket. Hinata roused her head when Kiba used her shoulder as a pillow, though he did not intent to offend her with his doglike mannerism. His feet raised on the knees of Kurenai pushed the limits of friendliness as she put them off lightly and rested her legs overtop them. "Good-day, Hinata. Good-day, Shino. Good-day Kurenai." Kiba said.   
  
"Since you two are here," Kurenai addressed the guys, "you are prepared to take the test. I'm not to going have you go through with it, because we are running short on time. There is an unregistered ninja called the Loner who heads from town to town healing children who are deparately ill. I met him for the first time when I was a genin. During a mission, the team I was on and I were seperated from our teacher. With the other two members dying, we stumbled upon the Loner who agreed to save my teammates. One of my teammates was a member of the Uchiha clan. He has the secrets of the Sharingan."  
  
Shino licked his index finger and flipped another page. Kurenai found it irritating but not worst than Kakashi's habit. The Art of War by Sun Tzu was a text from that ninja's based their training and philosophy. "If the secret of a bloodline is concerned, the Hunter-Nins should be involved." Shino said. "They are best prepared."  
  
"Don't give this chance up! Do you want to go back to picking up garbage?" Kiba snickered.  
  
"It is my responsibility to take care of the business of my teammates." Kurenai said. When Hinata heard this she smiled. "Are you going to come or not?"  
  
"I'll go where my teammates need me." Shino responded.   
  
"Good. Follow me." Kurenai stood up and bolted. Kiba rolled overtop Hinata's shoulders and jumped away too. When Hinata got up, Shino obstructed her path and adjusted his sunglasses. Hinata gave him some space. She held a string from her coat collar and plucked it with a finger.   
  
"Yes?" she started. The book folded up and went into his pocket.  
  
"Are you on edge?" Shino asked. Hinata thought for a while and swayed to her sides. "You knew that you would have to leave the blanket behind when we start the mission, so seems sensible to have not bring it at all. Are you covering up for feeling uneasy about this mission? I hope that I'm wrong."  
  
"Yea," she admitted. It usually annoyed her when people scavenged immaterial things to come to deep meaning about a person, but Shino had never appeared to impose on people. "My father said that I would kill someone soon."  
  
"And do you feel that if you do end up killing someone that he would have been under his guidance?"   
  
"Huh-huh." She softly stook her heartbroken head.  
  
"One day you will be with the one you love." Shino forecasted. Hinata hindered her breath but bestowed a small sober smile. "When this happens, will it be due to me or you? Your father just wanted to tell you that you wouldn't die because you couldn't kill a person on a mission."  
  
"Thank you," she said silently to herself because Shino had left the scene.  
  
Shino and Hinata caught up with Kiba and Kurenai. Kurenai had stopped to see which direction to head. Kiba squated on the tree with his hands on the branch. He looked over to Hinata and saw her look at Shino and smile. "Damn Shino," he thought, "he cheered up Hinata. Motivation is the chore of the leader of the group."   
  
Akamaru detected the blank stare that Kiba gave Shino. The dog jumped off Kiba's head and walked up to Hinata. Next to Hinata's feet, he wagged his petite pointed tail and released a small yelp. Hinata directed her eyes from Shino to the dog and picked him up to her arms. Shino who had stood beside her jumped next to Kurenai. In the distance, Kiba saw that Shino was conscripting his pet bee to her orders. "You must be a very kind person," Kiba mentioned to Hinata, "Akamaru only lets people pick him up if they are special."  
  
Hinata giggled and stroked Akaramu under the chin. Suddenly, the dog slipped from under her arms. "Shino is allegric to dogs." She exclaimed and brushed her coat off from dog hair. "If I have to help him, I shouldn't have dog hair on me."  
  
"Hey," Kiba walked over to Hinata and picked up The Art of War, "he must have dropped it."  
  
He turned through the pages and picked out a quote: "In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them; conceal your dispositions, and you will be safe from the prying of the subtlest spies, from the machinations of the wisest brains." Kiba laughed. "What a load of crap."  
  
His ears peaked as Kurenai called them again to follow her. Kiba placed the book into his pocket and pursued.  
  
A-------------------   
  
The Hokage, Iruka, and Hiashi sat down in an open room where the wind could blow freely. Hiashi held a dignified unexpressless face in the company of the two. "I demand that the Genin teams change." He said. "I am unsatsified with the results of the teams. I impose that Sakura transfer to team eight and in exchange, Hinata join team ten under the supervision of Kakashi."  
  
"And what brings upon this request?" Hokage asked.  
  
"Master, I discovered that Aburame Shino is on the same team as Hinata. The members of the Aburame clan are not to be trusted." He responded. "They are more ninja than ninja. Their secretive ways pass even you. The least noblest house should not meddle with the royality of Hyuuga."   
  
"I have never had a more sophisicated student cultured in the way of the sages than Shino." Iruka argued. "When presented with the choice of who my students most admire, above other ninjas and family members, Shino had picked Lao-Tzu."  
  
"Despite his acquaintance with the sages, my mind is made. If Shino is not isolated from Hinata, I will pull her out of the Academy's hand," he stood up and walked into the hallway. Haishi turned around to see a man wearing dark glasses and light brown overcoat. "Aburame, why are you here?"  
  
"Karma?" The man voiced ambiguously. "I did not wish to disturb you with my company."  
  
B-------------------   
  
In the tall grass field, grasshoppers creaked. The Loner sat close to the fire with his back to the field. His dozen vessels sat on the other side of the fire close to the tree line. "Here are the two new members," his young voice said under his black wool scarf that covered the lower half of his face. "They have joined our ranks of not feeling or aging and be blessed with achieving indifferent wisdom. Your concentration can be freed from the distraction of noise and feeling; this will bring right concentration and enlightenment."  
  
Ripples in his eyes formed as the larva crawled. They swirled in movement and with a hand gesture. "Byakugan!" he said. His vision darted out into the woods and it captured the faint streaks of activity. "Enemies approach. Hide in the tall grasses."  
  
Kurenai halted her squad and looked at Hinata. She nodded in reply. "Byakugan!" Her head snapped to catch all of the scene ahead of the team. "A dozen of them hid in field and one has headed into a forest. Their charka is not normal, and instead it is like Shino's. Each has a little worms crawling in them."  
  
"Understood. Hinata and Kiba, you will engage the rear enemies since you will have the easiest times sensing where they are hidden. They should have the power of the Byakugan and have to be killed. I want you, Shino, to hang back and use your bugs to battle the larvae." Kurenai dismissed Kiba and Hinata. Shino reached into his pockets and pulled out two scrolls. His hands then recoiled into his sleeves. When his hands came out, spiders crawled in his palms. They twisted their web together and shot off into the dark. The web weaved into a strong rope that wrapped around Shino's wrists. He grabbed the rope ready to swing. "You know that this ninja most likely has a tie to your clan?"   
  
"I'm more worried about Hinata." He said and stepped off the branch into a swing.   
  
The spiders hung onto a branch as Shino swung under and around it. He fixed his posture and reeled the spiders back into his coat. Bugs scurried over his face and leaked out from his clothing onto the tree. In his mind, he gave his orders to the swarm: "Surround the area... leave a path for his escape but not towards his allies." Shino watched the Loner jump over a bush and confront Kurenai. "We mustn't make him desparate."  
  
"I'm here to bring nature back to my teammates," she declared. He rolled up his white armbands that were stained with dirt and blood. His appearance was cold, dead, and white. Maggots fell off his wrist and into the ground.  
  
"Are you ready to join them?" The Loner said.  
  
The firepit lingered with smoke. Kiba, Hinata and Akamaru emerged from the forest. Kiba gradually sniffed each odor of the land. The exhaustion brought composed him. His hood was drawn back and he closed his eyes. Akamaru stood up and patted Kiba's leg. In a blind search, Kiba pulled out two soldier pills. One fell out of his hand, so Akamaru walked over it and comsumed it. The fur on his back redden and pricked. Finally Kiba shallowed his pill. Hinata detected the brightness of their chakra. It flooded through their body. Kiba dropped down to all fours. "Quadraped no Jutsu!" Akamaru jumped on Kiba's arched back. "Beast-Human Clone!"  
  
Before they dashed into the field, they clashed together to see who went first. One snapped his teeth at the other and growled. This did not stun the other Kiba as he ran his crawls down his face. The victor entered the field and the scarred one soon followed. To Hinata, who held back, the vision of battled looked like an infestation. The only thing she could hear were her father's words: "You will kill an enemy soon."   
  
Ten web strings shot out of his sleeves to his sides. Shino prepared for Kurenai to determine the first move. When the white eyes of the Loner gazed into the genin, Shino suddenly snapped and entangled the his overseer in a cocoon of web. A mutilated arm reached out from the web and tugged the string to cause Shino to soar out of the area. When Shino passed over the Loner's head, he broke the webbing and remarked, "You brought a member of the Aburame clan with you."  
  
Kiba furrowed through the tall grassed. From behind, he tackled a kid and broke the neck on impact with the ground. He puffed a few heavy breaths, and wiped the maggots off his face that feed on his cut. This spread the maggots to his hands. He jumped back and reached into his pocket. He pulled out Shino's copy of The Art of War, and swat it against his face. The pages felt apart into bugs once it hit his face and rid Kiba of the maggots.   
  
The smoke had vanished from the fireplace but Hinata had not. She froze. "I can't leave Kiba and Akamaru alone to fight," she thought. Her eyes watched for the right moment to enter the whirlpool of maggots that sweeped the place. Two kunais came from her pouch, and she threw them in the field to disturb the flow. She chased after them. Her attention reverted to the space between the forest and tall grass. A clutter of bugs that she recognized as Shino, hurtled through the tree tops and towards her. The maggots clung to her while she stood still. She rushed with her arms over her face and catch Shino. The infestation sounded like rain. Shino dropped into Hinata's waiting arms.   
  
Above the grass, two wild corkscrew weaved in and out of the field. One stopped and saw Hinata covered in destruction bugs. They popped off her and entered the circle of maggots. "Kiba!" Hinata shouted. His head shook in disagreement. She looked on his face that were covered in tiny bites but not claw marks. "Akamaru?"  
  
Blood gushed from Akamaru's mouth and he returned to his dog form. Behind him stood a boy with long black hair. "NO!" She lamented. She dashed with her arms recoile and her right palm sprung on the assailant's forehead. She looked down on the dog, who winched. From her point of view, she had seen Akamaru in the form of Kiba with double the amount of chakra flowing through their path. The system could not have taken any more substance. She wiped her tears on the collar of her sleeve. Her lips flutter and she raised her hands to her face. "What's happened?"  
  
Kiba revolved out of his tornado and smelt the air. "Shino's bugs are gone." He inhaled again. "Yahoo! Victory! Hinata? Akamaru? Were are you?" He admitted to himself, "Nothing's moving and the blood of the enemy has flooded the field."  
  
Bugs crawled up Shino's legs as he had his back against the tree concealing himself from the Loner's area of view. "He must think that I'm in the field." He reflected. "His actions to dispense of my presence means that he has interest in Kurenai." His pet bee flew on his outreached finger and then he released it. He spoke aloud, "Still..."  
  
"I know so much more about you." Shino looked up and a black scarf dropped down and wrapped around his neck.  
  
Kiba entered a path along the grass that lay with dead bodies. He ran and heard the faint noise of crying. Hinata sat with her feet under her and cried into her fingers. Kiba rushed over to her. "Hinata."  
  
She grabbed onto him and he lifted her to her feet. "I'm blind." Hinata weeped into his shoulder. She pushed herself away from him. "Get Akamaru; he's hurt."  
  
Kiba looked around and spotted his dog covered in blood. "Akamaru," Kiba said and picked him up to put into his hood. "Let's head out."  
  
C-------------------   
  
Over the passage way to the Aburame residence hung a sign that read: "The Gateless Gate." Team eight had returned home without Shino. "What is it Kiba?" Hinata asked as they stopped to read the sign. Kiba released her arm he used to guide her since their return and scratched his head. He grumbled.  
  
"There's a sign above the passageway that says the gateless gate." Kiba explained. "I think they're adversiting for a gate maker."  
  
Kurenai held back a laugh. "A koan: The Great Way has no gates, a thousand roads enter it. When one passes through the gateless gate, he freely walks between heaven and earth."  
  
"Ninja's learn that crap?" Kiba patted Hinata on the shoulder and laughed. Kiba sniffed the air. "Shino's father?"   
  
When he walked into the path of stones scattered with leafs heading out under the passage way, he turned and looked at the visitors. "The gate isn't going to open up any more than that," he mentioned and carried on his way. The group followed him in his garden, "I'm happy I didn't lead you up the garden path."  
  
He splashed the water over the hedges next to the tree. "Your son, Shino has been losted in unoffical action. It is a true misfortune."  
  
He replied, "Maybe."  
  
She returned alone the next time to bring him the news of his son's return. She acknowledge his switch of luck. "Maybe," was all he could say.  
  
When he visited the hostipal, the doctor said that he had lost all of his bugs. "Tragedy always come to the young of today."  
  
Kurenai stood next to where he was sitting reading a magazine. She crossed her arms and looked at him. "Maybe," she shouted in annoyance along with his calm voice. She looked over to the door of Shino's room that swung open and slamped shut. The doctor who left the room walked up to the other doctor. "I can't get in there."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"There are destruction bugs swarming the room." The doctor accounted the situation.  
  
"They are gathering to see who will enter him. He should employ stronger bugs for reasons I don't know." His father said.  
  
"He's back in action?" Kurenai said. "Great!"  
  
"Maybe," he caught her in surprise.  
  
"Maybe?" She asked. "How can you say maybe it is great that he gets his bugs back?"  
  
"It is good that he will be able to help people in need," he stated, "it is bad that he will have to face the option to use voilence. Together, it is a maybe. At this moment, who can say what caused Shino to scarifice all of his bugs?"   
  
D-------------------  
  
Kiba stared into Hinata's eyes. They had lost their full blue and black coals reverted from their once blue crystal perfection. This morning, the operators had removed four bugs that caught in her eyes. "Kiba?" She asked. "Are you still here?"  
  
"Yes, I am." He responded.   
  
"Sorry," she said, "if I'm talking more than usually. I used to be able to tell what people were saying by what I saw in their actions."  
  
"Has your father visited you yet?" He changed the subject.  
  
"No," she told him that it was a bad subject to which he diverted. She heard the window break and Kiba scream in pain. "Kiba!"  
  
Her bed shook and she guided her hands down the railing of the bed on the side that Kiba had sat. He felt his hand, grabbed it in her hand, and could not feel a pulse. "Kiba," she tears rolled down her eyes and her vision emerged in a blurry array of colours. Soon she could recognize shapes and Kiba vanished. Kurenai walked into the room.  
  
"I apologize you had to go through that, but you had to cry to reverse the side effects of your blindness." She said. "It took me a while to get the information from your father. You don't need to worry, Kiba is fine and attenting to Akamaru right now."  
  
"What caused my blindness?" Hinata asked.  
  
"We thought that the bugs that got into your eyes was the cause but your father told us that when using Byakugan and crying will make the user temporarily blind." Kurenai explained. "Akamaru is doing fine too."  
  
"And Shino?"   
  
"He's being the typical Aburame paradox."   
  
-------- End of Chapter Six ------------   
  
Next Chapter: The second mission is complete, but still a mystery to be revealed in the next mission. Hinata has helped her teammates though to do so she had to kill someone. Kiba is next to take the spotlight and you can bet that he is going to use his time to shine in his crazy way. Next time: Dogs: Team Eight!  
  
Notes: Shino's father (still don't have a name yet), uses a pun when Kiba, Kurenai and Hinata follow him into his garden. To lead one up the garden path is an English phrase that means "to deceive". It would be absurd in the literal sense since he was leading them up the garden path, but like all good Tao sages, he uses a witty paradox. His words were correct but also equally incorrect. A correct meaning of what he says was that he was glad that his visitors weren't deceived when he said that his gateless gate couldn't be opened any more. They should let themselves in.   
  
In a reference to a toaist story, an old farmer is surrounded by a circle of misfortunes and luck and each time someone refers to something being one way or the other, he says "maybe". The farmer loses a horse, then the horse comes back with three wild horses, then his son breaks his leg riding a horse, and finally his son is not enlisted to go to war because his son has a broken leg. When the neighbours tell him that things have turned up all right, yeah, he says "maybe".   
  
Predictions: How can a predict the crazy Kiba? I can give you a hint that he is going to sing a song that has "Dogs" in the title. Pink Floyd? Maybe. 


	7. The Dogs Do Dare Dream and Devote!

The Dogs of War: Team Eight  
  
Chapter Seven: The Dogs Do Dare Dream and Devote!  
  
Akamaru balanced on Kiba's head as he walked out of the door of the vet. The dog opened his mouth and shook his tail in enjoyment of the fresh air breeze. The young pup barked. "You're too old for that." The dog barked again. "Not in public, I don't want to sing right now." Kiba said. Akaramu insisted, so he put his dog down on the table and took both front paws in his hands. Akaramu stood up with Kiba's support. "Ok. Do you remember your lines?"   
  
The dog barked twice. "This used to be fun for me too when the girls had paid attention to this routine." Kiba scowled. They both started to hop from one leg to the other. "How much is that doggy in the window?" He sung. Akaramu added: "Woof, Woof!"  
  
"Huh?" Sasuke stopped so he could interject. Kiba looked over to Sasuke. "You said you only did that for the girls."  
  
Before Kiba could explain his excuse, Sasuke had walked away from them. Kiba got so close to Akamaru that there was a noticable twitch in his right eyebrow. His dog cowarded. "Did you know what just happened to us?" He said in a mencing low tone. He stood back and pointed a finger at his dog. "We dropped down a whole peg!" His hand opened and Akamaru jumped in Kiba's fold. "As long as you're by my side."  
  
Akamaru returned to Kiba's head. "We need a new song." Kiba put a hand over his chin. "Hmmm? I got it. Bark twice after every line." Kiba started to sing. "The dogs of war don't negotiate /The dogs of war won't capitulate, /They will take and you will give, /And you must die so that they may live /You can knock at any door, /But wherever you go, you know they've been there before /Well winners can lose and things can get strained /But whatever you change, you know the dogs remain."  
  
When they finished singing, they arrived at the hospital. In the hall where Shino's room was, Ino sat on a chair with a snowball cactus on her lap. "What are you doing given Shino a cactus?" Kiba asked standing next to her.   
  
"Well, hello to you too!" She snapped and then leaned back in her chair. "Akamaru."  
  
"I hate it when she acknowledges my dog but not me." He reflected. Shino's father entered the hallway from his son's room. "So, how is that bed bug?"  
  
"He will endure. Alas, his bugs have departed from him and so has his personal memories." He explained. "With the contract our clan has with the bugs, they store memories to give us more capacity to control the bugs."  
  
"Ah, I was wondering why Shino had a lack of personality." Kiba stated.  
  
"Umm... I am going to have to write that down." He spoke and walked down the hall. "The bugs have left his room, so you can visit him now."  
  
"Tell me more about your clan." Kiba demanded and followed the leader of the clan. Ino breathe sighed in relief and entered the room. Shino lied in bed with a respirator over his mouth and nose. Fog covered and disappeared from the inside of the clear plastic dome. Small red blemishes draped his body. She took a seat next to his bed on the side of his broken arm that casted in a sling.   
  
"Why didn't you tell me?" She asked. She got up and walked to the door then turned around to him. "You wouldn't be able to answer that. You wouldn't remember me, and you wouldn't remember your promise to me."   
  
A-------------------   
  
Kiba departed from the old man when Hinata's room put a crossroad in their path. His dog entered the room first. "Hey, Hinata!" Kiba said. Hinata looked at him with her fully filled blue eyes. "Glad to hear you got your eye sight back."  
  
"I'm happy that the doctors got the bugs out of my eyes too." She remarked. Akamaru pawed Kiba's leg and barked.  
  
"You're right!" Kiba nodded to Akamaru and left.  
  
Hinata rushed to the door. "What is he right about?"  
  
Akamaru planted his nose to the ground. "Where are they dog?" Kiba asked. He continued leading until he got to the first floor where a doctor in a light teal garment picked up a mental tray. Kiba blocked the guys path and peered into the tray. "They're here." He scooped them up in his hand. "I wonder what memories they hold?"  
  
The door to the elevator opened and Ino bumped into Kiba. "Yeah, Ino." Kiba said. "Have you ever entered the mind of an animal?"  
  
"Sure, for one mission..." she attempted to tell him the whole story but it would have to wait for another time.   
  
"Great! How about entering into Shino's bugs?" Kiba opened his hand.   
  
"I guess it wouldn't hurt." She caught the bugs in her vision then used her hands to make a triangle and focus in on one. "Body replacement jutsu!"  
  
She stumbled but recomposed herself quickly and entered the other bugs. "How did these bugs survive?"  
  
"Shino must have ordered them to hide in Hinata's eyes." Kiba guessed.   
  
"Wow!" She lended towards Kiba and looked into his palm crawling with the four bugs. "What commitment! Be careful to give these back to him."  
  
"What memories are they?"  
  
"One memory is about Kurenai telling him the function of a team. The next one I saw was based in the Academy where you said that you were the leader. And third one possessed a private moment between Hinata and him." Ino stated. "The last one is sort of weird. I don't know what relevence it has." She tapped her foot impatiently. "Eureka!" Her hand brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. The insight prompted her to gloat to herself: "Shikamaru would never have figured this out. Shino had better remember his promise."  
  
"Ino?" Kiba said.  
  
"Oh." Ino stated. She rubbed her nose and then pulled a kleenex out of her pocket. "You should blow your nose."  
  
"What?!" Kiba grabbed the kleenex from her and blew. His body slanted back when she took the Kleenex from him. She handed him another one. "Ok."  
  
She took the kleenex again. "You're okay now."  
  
Kiba exited the elevator. Ino pressed a button and the doors slid close. Kiba looked in his palm then crushed the bugs in his fist.  
  
B-------------------   
  
Kurenai stepped to the side to allow a group of ninjas to pass her in the hall, chatting about their new missions. "I did what I had to do," she convinced herself.  
  
The red doors were shut. She tighted the knot of her head protector. Her slow action to open the door caused a creak and when she slid through the small gap she had opened, the door slammed shut with a loud bang, drawing attention of the people in the room. She walked to the front and sat down in front of the Hokage whose face draped in smoke from his pipe. "You have put your team at risk that belongs to another group of ninjas." Hokage had his hat off, showing his wrinkled bald forehead and white hair that held on to the sides and back of his head. "Geez, today, ninjas are notably insubordinate and still most precious to me." He emptied his pipe in an astray. "Considering your team's position, I need you to capture an S-class ninja and bring her back to the hospital. Here is your briefing."   
  
He handed her a scroll. "Who will train my team?"  
  
"Due to the lost of the memory of Shino, Master Aburame will instruct your group." He responded.  
  
"Wouldn't it be safer if the group came with me on my mission?" She asked.  
  
C-------------------   
  
In the front yard of the Hospital, Hinata rested Shino against a tree. She kneeled down next to him and felt his pale forehead with her hand. "Shino you shouldn't fight Sasuke right now." Hinata pleded. "He is willing to wait until you heal."  
  
Sasuke stood still opposing them. He affirmed his conclusion he had on Shino, "Foolish!"   
  
Shino's grey overcoat was snipped up half way so that he could have move for his broken arm. "I am without a self. What fortune or disaster can cling to me?" Shino asked. "This opponent says that he has unfinished business with me, and I can bring him harmory." He looked up and recalled Sasuke's comment: "Shino, I have always been the one who accepts the challenges of others, but today, for the first time, I challenge another. This is you, we will fight and finish what we started when you're ready."  
  
Shino slowly got up with the help of Hinata. He held out his good arm towards Sasuke. Sasuke's spine shuddered. "He can't be serious!" Sasuke remarked. Shino stood in a slump and waited for Sasuke to fight. "WHAT is he hiding from me?!" He shook his head. "I give up."  
  
Shino collapsed against the tree. "Had he defeated himself, what value would he place on me?"  
  
D-------------------   
  
Restraints wrapped around Shino to keep him in his bed. He reflected on his memories, the one that he had engraved to his own mind:  
  
The early morning following the battle had carried Shino noose around the neck to a windy plane where the Loner had thrown him on the ground. Shino had held his neck coughing for relief. The maggots of him that had dispensed along their path would return to reveal that none had followed.   
  
"When I was your age, I had fought in a battle between two villages." Spoke the Loner. "Ordinary soldiers exalted from the fields let slip their blood to fix the tear of a promise of bond untreated. The lords of the villages promised to marry their children, but this had not happened."  
  
"If you are the origin of my clan, why had your numbers been so small?" Shino had inquired regaining his breath. "It has been many generations."  
  
"I have had to rebuild by the fold from the pursuits of ninjas coveting my immorality." He had said. "I need an Aburame member to stop this, but you do not surrender. You are not the first I have taken, but be the last."  
  
"My bugs can kill the larva," Shino had stated, "though I refuse to kill a person belonging to my clan."   
  
"You have not had as long as I have to think about it." The loner had replied. "I do not have that problem."  
  
A hive landed in Shino's lap and errupted with a swarm of bees. "Release your bugs."  
  
E-------------------   
  
Kiba and Hinata sat on a stone. In the red glow of the early morning, Kiba raised his rough hand up to his mouth and yawned. Their teacher had left them again, and this time she would not have them participate. Hinata slipped on the straw of her juice box and patted her fingers against the cardboard. Appearing before them, kneeled down showing a short spherical gourd balancing on his back, Shino's father stood up and looked over Kiba and Hinata through his dark black glasses. "Ciao." Shino's father said.  
  
"You're are teacher!" Kiba stood up and grabbed into his hair.  
  
"Good morning," Hinata said, "What is your name? What should we call you?"  
  
"My name?" He pulled out a notebook out of his pocket that fit into his palm. He flipped through the pages. "I have yet to find where I wrote my name. Sage should suffice. It has been what people have called me."  
  
"How can you be a sage when you don't even know your own name?" Kiba asked.  
  
"Kiba, on what do you stand?" The sage asked.  
  
"A rock." He replied.  
  
"Do you think the rock named itself?" The sage retrieved a treat from his pocket, and with the other hand raised it down to direct Kiba to sit. When he complied, the sage tossed him the treat. "Good boy."  
  
"This is going to be fun," Kiba stated while chewing on the treat. Hinata removed herself from her daze and nodded with a smile. Kiba swallowed. "Can I have another one?"  
  
"I have something better for you." The sage pointed off into the forest. "You will find the antidote in that direction."  
  
"Antidote?" Kiba puzzled.  
  
"For your poison." He clarified. Kiba yelled and jumped over Hinata who fell to her back. She rolled off the rock and followed him. "They are well motivated."   
  
E-------------------   
  
The moonlight poured through the trees and glittered in the rippling waters of a shallow stream shedding from a trickling waterfall. Kiba pooled water into his cupped hands and slipped. Hinata dropped her burning face into the water. When she pulled out, she wiped the side of her eyes with her sleeve. Two red splots lined with small blue veins shelved her eyes. "Give up, Hinata," Kiba urged her. "He had put the antidote too far away for us to get it."  
  
"No," she said. A peel of skin covered her sleeve. She felt her pulsating face and blood covered her hands. Her eyes cracked and split. She crawled over to him and dragged him out of the water, scraping her shins and knees on the icy unsmooth stones. She sat him up and put his arm around her back. Picking him up, the stones under her feet unbalanced her but she managed to hold Kiba. "Now walk."  
  
"Wait," he reached into his pocket of the outside of where Hinata held him, and she had to dig her shoulder into his rips to hold him. He displayed two soldier pills in his hands. "Take them and save yourself."  
  
Kiba fell over and knocked Hinata down into a stalk of dry tall weeds.   
  
Hidden in the bushes over the waterfall, the sage watched Hinata draw herself towards Kiba. "I've gone too easy on them."  
  
Hinata opened Kiba's fist and removed the pills. She opened Kiba's mouth and placed it under his tongue and swallow the other one. Her ears filled with a flood and she clasped her hands around her head. "There was never poison in the treat." The sage said. Kiba, who had stood up and forced his breaths with a long deep rattle, clutched his teeth and sprang at him. The sage departed in a mass of bugs. Kiba crushed two stones that he landed on and looked around to see that the sage had surrounded them. Each sage held throwing stars ready to throw. The ambush was released and when Hinata opened her eyes, she notice Kiba protecting her. She rolled him off of her and saw that the next batch was coming.  
  
E-------------------   
  
Hinata and Kiba woke up on the stone with Kurenai standing where the sage had stood. The two held eachother. "ENOUGH!" Kurenai yelled. Kiba slowly pushed Hinata away and saw that she had no injuries.  
  
"Genjutsu?" Kiba said.  
  
"Correct," the genjutsu master Kurenai revealed. "Shino's father will be training you two tomorrow, and I have given you a glimpse of his method."  
  
"That's why he didn't say his name, because you don't know it." Hinata hinted.  
  
"That is true," Kurenai crossed her arms, "but he did tell me that he had lost his name. If you don't want to go through something similar, but more real than today, then give up being a ninja. The sage will demand more from you. I have a mission to attend to, I hope that I will be returning to my students."  
  
Kurenai disappeared. "Woah." Kiba wiped his eyes. "I wouldn't expect training to be so hard."  
  
"Yeah," Hinata said.  
  
F-------------------  
  
"Had you done as I required of you?" The sage asked Kurenai as they sat at a table outside a tea shop.   
  
"I do not agree with it, but yes I had."  
  
"They will come to me." The sage remarked. "Confucius said, 'To live along the benevolent is good. To choose not to be with the benevolent... of this I know not!'"  
  
"Kiba and Hinata may not think you benevolent." Kurenai laughed.  
  
With two dry chuckles, the sage said, "But what of themselves? Will friends willing to scarifice for one another ever have their bonds broken?"  
  
-------- End of Chapter Seven ------------   
  
Next Chapter: Next day, Hinata and Kiba will have to endure what the sage has set for them. Other questions will be revealed, like about what the forth surviving memory had been. Kurenai will also start her mission.   
  
Notes: Kiba was singing "Dogs of War" by Pink Floyd.  
  
There you go, if you want to know Shino's father name, he doesn't know either. Maybe one day he will find the slip of paper on which he wrote his name.   
  
Predictions: The episode with the Loner will be cleared up as well as why Shino has lost all of his bugs and memories. I think it is pretty clear already, but there is nothing really to predict, except that a fanfiction by me, which follows along the line of this fanfiction, will be focused on team ten (Shikamaru, Ino, Choji) and you should go and read it. 


	8. The Sage Slowly Says His Sensible Servic...

The Dogs of War: Team Eight  
  
Chapter Eight: The Sage Slowly Says His Sensible Service!  
  
At the steps connecting two sparely separated levels of a rooftop was where Kiba sat. Ahead of him, a guard rail planted at the edge of the building and obstructed Kiba's view of the congested village. Slightly dirty clouds spat some rain. Kiba arched over his knees and rested his elbows on them and further more had his head in his hands. Akaramu found refuge under Kiba's legs.   
  
The rain increased to sheets of water as the sage showed next to the guard railing with an blue umbrella. "Where is," he flipped his wrist and opened his notebook, "Hinata?"  
  
An array of bugs crawled from under his collar and fashioned into a long and almost flat peasant hat, and then the sage passed the umbrella over to Kiba who caught it over his head. Kiba fell backwards and the umbrella cracked the pavements. "Hold it up, pupil." Kiba pulled himself up and held the umbrella in two hands against his torso. "I don't want to repeat myself again; where is Hinata?"  
  
"Why should I know?" Kiba retorted. The sage walked up to him and lead him to one of the row of trees that were behind him. He took Kiba's arms and put them straight out so that the end of the umbrella touched the truck. Kiba's arms stook and his grip loosen with the rain entering inbetween his hand and the bamboo handle.   
  
"When you know where Hinata is, you can put the umbrella down and tell me."  
  
"She's coming. She's just late." Kiba said.  
  
"You have not done as I had asked." The sage sluggishly said. "I'll not repeat my instructions. Be mindful to your task."  
  
Akamaru barked when a rapid splashing of feet carried in from the steps to the roof. "I can smell her, she's on the stairs," Kiba struggled with the umbrella.   
  
"We are waiting for me to know that you know." The sage had his back turned to the stairs and Hinata, in her yellow rain coat with hood up, stepped onto the roof.   
  
"Go, look behind you." Kiba said adjusting his grip on the handle. "Hinata's behind you."  
  
"I shall not spare my eyes from you." The sage said and took off his peasant hat. Kiba looked at the sage, who stood impartial to the rain, dipping into his large collar and over his sunglasses. His hair flatten down.   
  
"Damn it!" Kiba growled. His body relaxed and his anger and confusion faded from his mind. The umbrella smashed into the ground and splashed into the water causing a mixture of stone chips and cords of water. "She's beside you."  
  
"Now you understand the difference between having and not having mindfulness towards your task. Your happiness to finish the task had taken root in your heart, and you did not know my instructions. Like the load on your arms, the umbrella was, your carelessness has burdened your heart to struggle needlessly towards contentment." The sage said. "Now pick the umbrella back up."  
  
Kiba folded it and clutched it in his arms. "When you are comfortable holding it, then you can try to hold it over your head."  
  
"Am I late?" Hinata asked timidly.   
  
"No, I asked Kiba to come early." The sage responded and pulled another umbrella placed under his coat and handed it to her. She stepped back to one leg to take it. A weight hung from a wire string that ended in a loop and sat in the sage's hand. "Everytime I notice your mindfulness is lacking, I will attach a ten pound weight. There are eight spokes to the umbrella, so that amounts to eighty pounds. Follow me."  
  
He lead them down the stairs and lined them up against the wall. "Put your backs against the walls, and bend your legs." The two followed his orders. The sage then when down on one knee and tied a weight around Akamaru's neck. "Hold your umbrella out."  
  
"Hey," Kiba shivered with his umbrella held out in his hands. "Akamaru can't hold that."  
  
The sage added a weight to the middle of Kiba's umbrella. Akamaru reversed his back legs up the wall in a comprise to the physical endurance the other two members were under going. "Repeat after me. I will be mindful to my task."  
  
"I will be mindful to my task," the two spoke and Akaramu surely barked.  
  
"I will not perform other tasks to distract me from the task you give me," the sage put in a listless voice.  
  
"I will not perform other tasks to distract me from the task you give me," they said and Akaramu barked with effort.  
  
"That is it. Now stand up." He directed them to their normal state that shudder in weakness and pressure. "We are going to the preschool carrying the weights. When we get there, your next task will be to entertain them. I sense that there will be a storm and we must keep their mind busy and off the storm. Don't forget the words you have said."  
  
A-------------------   
  
They entered the preschool and stood on the mat near the entrance. It was dark and quiet with the only sound coming from the outside of heavy rain fall and rumbling thunder. Flashes of lighting illuminated the room. A dark hair teacher walked up to the sage. "I'm glad you have come," she said. It was difficult to see her clothing, it was a green sleeveless top with a long white gown, as well as her facial expressions. But her unsettled voice revealed her anxiety. The sage walked into the darkness lurking in the nearest wall. "It was hard making them take a nap, and they should be able to sleep at the most, half an hour."  
  
"My students don't have that time to waste on their current task." The sage serenely state. The lights of the room flickered on and off, and to the dismay of the teacher, the sage was fooling around with the switch. "Wake up! Wake up!" He left the lights on and Kiba and Hinata stared with their mouths wide open at all the kids who rubbed their eyes and sobbed. The thunder boosted and the room embranced in a collective gasp. The sage broke silence in his chilling voice: "I think that a heard someone being struck with lighting."  
  
This followed by a loud scream. The sage walked over to his group. "Now you have your work cut out for you." He said. "Your new task starts at this moment. Entertain the children."  
  
Akaramu frantically slipped off his weight and ran with a joyous puppy bark into the crowd of whimpering children. "Akamaru," Kiba and Hinata said. The sage picked up the weight that Akaramu removed and put a weight on Hinata and Kiba's umbrellas.   
  
"Be mindful your own task." The sage said. "Don't carry around distractions."  
  
"You gave us one?!" Kiba shouted.  
  
"You are correct;" the sage added another weight to both of them, "you should be punished accordly."  
  
"He's being unreasonable asshole," Kiba muttered under his breath and lugged his umbrella to the wailing children. Hinata followed in her shuffle. This shuffle stalled when a group of children ambushed her and clung to her legs.   
  
"Woah.." she fumbled warying she may drop the weight on one of them. "How are you?"  
  
"We're scared," a girl looked up at Hinata. They shared the same impotent voice.   
  
Kiba had a similar size set surrounding him. "And what the hell do you want?"  
  
His audience lessen and joined one of the large groups that were entertained by the teacher and Akamaru. Kiba glaced over at Akaramu's group. "Shameless Showboating sailor swine!"  
  
"Ooooo.." the children that remained around him sounded astonished.   
  
The smallest group belonged to the sage, and it was merely an individual pink haired girl standing near the sage who sat down on a large building block. "Can I see your glasses?"  
  
"If you can tell I have glasses," the sage began, "then you must be able to see them."  
  
"No, silly," she batted his knee with her hand. "I want to hold them."  
  
"Of course," the sage removed them and handed them to her, "go ahead, break them."  
  
"Don't wanda break them," she giggled and put them on her face. "Dark."  
  
"Can I ask you a question," the sage rubbed his weakly grown facial hair, "are you seeing the glasses or seeing through the glasses?"  
  
"I tell that the glasses are on," she repeated his motion and stroke her face keeping her posture in deep thought, "so I am seeing them!"  
  
"Can't you know that you are wearing the glasses if you close your eyes?" The sage asked. "And when you have your eyes open with the glasses on, can't you see me who is through the glasses?"  
  
"It must be both!" She conclude.  
  
"Interesting insight."  
  
Hinata strained herself with the children and the umbrella that she put the umbrella on the side. "Don't Hinata!" Kiba warned. She had not looked up to him but the sage pulled out a weight from his pocket and walked to Kiba who was inbetween the sage and Hinata. Instead of going to Hinata, the sage stopped at Kiba and put the weight he was carrying on Kiba. Kiba dropped the umbrella as the weight exceeded his expectations. "What are you doing?"  
  
"Keep mindful of your task and don't continue tasks that don't belong to you." The sage said. Kiba kneeled down to pick up the umbrella. "Are you sure about that?" The girl who had spoke with the sage tugged on his coat. She avoided eye contact with him.   
  
"I broke your glasses." She whimpered.  
  
"Are you alright?" He asked. She nodded. Kiba gripped his hands under the umbrella. He looked around the room and saw that Akaramu and Hinata were making the children happy. Hinata performed magic tricks with her blood limit, and Akaramu pulled children around in a wagon. Then Kiba remembered how the sage had punished Hinata and Kiba twice when they shouted at Akaramu.   
  
"This is our new task," Kiba spoke, "we don't have to carry on with the old task. That's why he hadn't added a weight to Akarmaru. Akarmaru was mindful of his task, but we weren't."  
  
"Precisely," the sage stated. "If you are not one with mindfulness, you are carrying a ludicrously large load that will hurt your effort in your task. When a new task is taken up, it deserves your undivided attention. The heart is not pure when the mind is not in harmony. Akaramu has a pure heart, and will not do any harm when performing a task."   
  
A-------------------   
  
In a cold stream carrying chunks of ice, the Loner walked on the water above Shino who had the water up to his shoulders. "It was close to a stream where I had contracted the larva. On a match in the heavy rains to the other village, the squad I was in had been ambushed," the Loner recounted. A piece of ice as big as Shino's torso floated close to him that he had to push it out of the way. Where his finger tips touched the ice, they came off with red splots that strung. "We dissolved to flee the enemy and I was seperated. I happened upon a group of insects that were halted at a flooded river. They had returned from another hive, bring back the larva. Injured from my retreat, a pack was made for me to cross the river with the larva, future slaves of the victor's hive. The pain that day was the last thing I felt." The Loner pulled out a dagger. "In return, my family would be protected by these destruction bugs. Now, I only ask that you release your bugs so that they can protect me."  
  
"I can't," Shino trembled, "do that."  
  
The dagger entered into Shino's chest and he folded into the stream and screamed into the waters. The bugs swept away in the current, intercepted by the Loner.  
  
Shino had continued down the river. At a low point, he had mustered up and was left with the sayings of the wise sages, his moments with the loner, and a broken body.   
  
"Lao Tzu wrote:   
  
'Other people are excited,   
  
as though they were at a parade.   
  
I alone don't care,   
  
I alone am expressionless,   
  
like an infant before it can smile.'"  
  
B-------------------   
  
The sage, Hinata, Kiba, and Akaramu had stayed at the preschool until the rains had stopped. Outside, in the new light of the sun, the students lined up for their next task. "Your next task is to refrain from using violence until we finish walking to the academy." The sage said. "Akaramu, you can't say anything until you get to the academy."  
  
"Sure," Hinata rejoiced.  
  
"I can't walk that far without getting into a fight!" Kiba exlaimed. He lead Hinata and Akaramu in the direction of the school leaving the sage behind them. "I wouldn't be a very good ninja if I didn't."  
  
"As a teacher, I must give my students a push in the right direction," the sage performed some hand signs and pushed Hinata and Kiba on the back turning them to the left.   
  
"Hey!" Kiba said. "That is the long way."  
  
"The way you are going is too rough." The sage announced. "For this task, it is best to take the least dangerous road."  
  
"Hell no!" Kiba said.   
  
"Suit yourself," the sage said, "but remember, you will refrain from violence. If I feel it fit, I will step in to solve the problem." Then the sage thought: "My Hidden Note on Back Jutsu was the most feared when I attented the academy. This genjutsu makes the opponent unaware of a note on his back and notes of others who are under the same genjutsu."  
  
"Dynmatic Entrance!" Gai leaped from behind with a jump kick and booted Hinata in the ass. Gai turned his dented cheeked face to the sage and gave him a nice guy pose with a bright grin and a solid thumbs up.   
  
"Childish as ever, Mr. Sage!" The black bowl cutted haired jounin remarked retaining his nice guy pose.  
  
Kiba helped Hinata up, "Why did you do that?!"  
  
"Carry on with your task." The sage ordered so Kiba assisted Hinata to limp away to the academy. "How may I be a service to you?"  
  
"I need a saying to inspire the students." Gia said and flipped out a pad and pencil.   
  
"A student does not die without a dead teacher." The sage said.  
  
"WHAT?!" Gia broke his pencil on the pad. "I can't tell them that! It's too morbid."  
  
"Dead is natural," the sage spoke as he drifted off to his students, "for a teacher to die before his students is what is to be inspired towards."   
  
C-------------------   
  
The sage appeared in front of Kiba and Hinata who crawled along the ground.   
  
"How is your task doing?" He asked.  
  
"Horrible." Hinata heralded.  
  
"Asume kicked me in the ass!" Kiba stated. "Through a brick wall!"  
  
"You know they wouldn't be good ninjas if they didn't walk a block without getting into a fight." The sage retorted. "Now, stand up, I said that we were going to walk to the academy."  
  
They struggled to rise and took steep strange steps. Leaning against the alley they had passed, Kakashi lowered his book and looked around the corner to see them with their notes: "Hit me in the ass!"  
  
The exposed eye of Kakashi bordered with red and he put a hand over his mouth cloth. "I shouldn't; I am very late for my meeting with my students." Kakashi looked around the bend again. He put his book anyway and held his hands together with the index fingers pointed out of the fist. "I'll go for the teacher then."  
  
"1000 years of pain!" Kakashi bolted out and aimed himself at the teacher. When the strike landed, the sage reverted into a colony of bugs, and the true sage materialized behind Kakashi and pulled him up from the knot of his mouth cloth.  
  
"Should I take it off?" The sage asked of the piece of clothing covering the lower half of Kakashi's face.   
  
"No, keep it on!" Kakashi turned around and begged.   
  
"Suit yourself." The sage said to the departing Kakashi. Kakashi leaped from building to building until he caught up with his students at a bridge.   
  
"Sorry, I'm late," Kakashi said to Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura, "I met someone who had a bug up his butt and he distracted me."  
  
"Liar!" Naruto said.  
  
The hard outline of the pink haired girl, Sakura, named inner-Sakura, evoked inside of her and yelled: "Look at his back! KICK him!"  
  
Sakura hardly hesitated and rushed him. "I'm sorry, Sasuke and Naruto," Kakashi turned around as Sakura planned to land her kick and misfired in between his legs. He folded up and fell to the ground.   
  
"I didn't mean to, you had a note on your back," Sakura explained but her inner-Sakura boosted with a passionate flame: "Hell Ya! I beat a jounin!"  
  
"I should have asked him to take it off." Kakashi muttered in pain.   
  
D-------------------   
  
The sage's students arrived at the academy without any accidents. "You were mindful of your task." The sage remarked. "There is nothing left to teach you today."  
  
The sage disappeared and left Hinata and Kiba to lie face down in the grass. "Urg!" Kiba grunted. "I can't stand him."  
  
"We have to take this lying down," Hinata responded, "Kurenai warned us about his training, and it seems to be a lot less painful than she had described."  
  
Akaramu lied low in front of Kiba's face and barked softly. "What!" Kiba yelled. "He put notes on our backs!"  
  
"He does seem a bit immature for his age," Hinata said, "especially compared to Shino."  
  
"It must be that they stop losing their memories when they get older," Kiba presumed. "They have more bugs and more memories that aren't destroyed so easily."  
  
"Let's stop talking about him," Hinata suggested.  
  
"Okay," Kiba said.   
  
"Would you really protect me from all of those kunais?" Hinata asked.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"When Kurenai trapped us in the genjutus." She elaborated.  
  
"I thought they were real kunai," Kiba state, "so yeah."  
  
"Thank you." Her hand reached out and settled on Kiba's back. After a moment, the pressure increased and Kiba found that she was on her feet again. "Take my hand; I'll help you up."  
  
So he did.  
  
-------- End of Chapter Seven ------------   
  
Next Chapter: Kurenai will encounter her mark and Shino will fully recover. The sage continues his training of team eight. There will be one last mission before the chuunin exams.   
  
Notes: When the sage gave Gai the inspiring saying, it is the similar to the story of "grandfather dies, father dies, grandson dies", which is another taoist story.  
  
I promised to reveal the memory of the forth bug in this chapter but I didn't, but next chapter.   
  
Predictions: Kurenai fights an S-class ninja, there is nothing predictionable about that. 


	9. Fight For Freedom From Falsehoods

The Dogs of War: Team Eight  
Chapter Nine: Fight For Freedom From Falsehoods  
  
The dead leafs hidden under the fog crackled under Kurenai's sandals. When she halted, her cupped hand sweeped across her body and paired the mist in front of her revealing a spider caught in midair. Her eyes surveyed for any branches the web may be attracted to, but they were far away. She walked over to the spider and bent down to see a glimmering of a trip wire. Her pace had been slow to find these traps. "I am not close to her." Kurenai said. "This trip wire has been here for a while, yet she has not returned from her stronghold to clean or inspect this trap."   
  
This was not information that had been given to her, but with her cautious approach, she was able to be ready for anything on this mission. Pulling out a string with a small gem on the end, she threw it ahead of her and started to pull it towards her. After a while, the gem started to pull up. "Multiple set ups."

* * *

Kiba and Akamaru looked out the window to see the red rooftops and mass of interconnecting wires. Hinata sat queitly at the door of Shino's hospital room where he sat at he edge of his bed in the hospital clothes. "We are having our next mission today." The Sage told them. "Arrive at the forest of death at noon."  
  
"But, we wouldn't have enough time," Kiba argued.  
  
"You better leave now so you are only mildly late then." The Sage said. Hinata bolted through the door and Kiba and Akamaru jumped out the window. "I will see you there, Shino."  
  
Shino finally removed his arm from the sling and rotated his shoulder before putting his hand through his coat sleeve. When raising his head, he saw a teenage boy with black long sprouting weedlike hair, a grey scarf wrapping around the lower half of his face and down to his neck, and a pair of glasses like Shino. "Are you doing well, little brother?"  
  
Around his waist, a clay jug hung from his belt and he held one hand against it bouncing it against his hip. His feet were shoulder lenght apart and at the top of his left tigh, he had tied his hidden leaf forehead protector. "Shall I introduce eachother? Your name is Aburame Shino. I am your older brother, Aburame Shiro, at your service for your big-fat information." He cheerfully announced. His hair had less lift than Shino's and consisted of many strands rather than collecting in one clumb. "I've heard it was like being born again, to lose all of your personal memories. If this is true, then I'll wish you well in your new life."  
  
"Why is, ah, your voice so colourful, aniue?" Shino unsharply asked.   
  
"That old fossil was here to meet you, I see. Only the heir to the clan is like old stick in the mud," Shiro pointed at his little brother, "or that old fossil."  
  
As if he knew the question before Shino, he provided him with more answers. "I was like you before you were born. Not exactly, I was a chuunin before you became a genin. However, the heir of the Aburame clan is unconventionally the youngest child, you gotta know. This is to my understanding that the youngest gets the benefit of the older generation; it would be a a failure in progress if the youngest were weaker than the people who raised him." He started to whistle a few bars of Bach's Bouree and Shino shuttered as the bugs inside him leap around his body. "That old fossil doesn't like it when you whistle, but you're better than that, isn't that so?"  
  
"It would be against Filial Piety." Shino stated.   
  
"You'll figure it out someday, really," Shiro laughed, "old stick in the mud."  
  
"Why do you keep calling me that, aniue?" Shino asked.  
  
"Every child of our clan gets a nickname like that from the previously born or mother. I was given the name old windbag." Shiro laughed again and removed a tear from his eye with his left hand. A red tatoo of two stripes meeting in the middle of his palm to have one curve in itself strenched up and down his whole hand from the top of his middle finger to the bottom of his palm. "I'd talked too much, which for our clan's heir would be a person of normal social skills, and the name stayed. I suppose that is why you were born. But the reason to add old before the name's to show that we most respect people younger than us, though many would disagree. I say screw them. Only those who serve others are truly fulfilled."

* * *

The tall wire gate to enter the Forest of Death entwined with chains secured with locks combined with ninja seals and a rusty white sign printed with bold red letters. "Forbidden Area." Hinata fluttered. To the left of team eight, a neck length dark haired woman wearing a pale trench coat, a short pair of orange shorts appeared on the roof of a wooden stand. From the top of her knees to the height of her neck, fishnet clothing lay underneath revealing her curves. Streamers shot from her and confetti collected around a metal shin guard that she placed on the peak of the roof.   
  
"Woah!" Kiba concluded.   
  
"I'm the undefendable Anko!" She announced and jumped off the roof performing somersaults to land in front of them. She rose and threw her fist into the air and madly grinned with closed eyes of intensity. "Ahaaay!"  
  
"Still got that hickey?" The sage said. Anko frowned and even the hair she tied high up behind her head that sprouted over head like a crown lost its spike. She marched over to him and grapped onto his coat to truly trounce him. She stopped to burn him with her light brown eyes. His hand harnessed her hair hanging over her headprotector and brushed it off to the side. "Hmm, I am ever glad to wot that you are still a hidden leaf ninja. Care to instruct my students?"  
  
She cleared her throat and put her hands in her coat pocket. "Listen clearly, young hoodlums! Your geezer teacher has a map of the areas where you will be disarming the traps that were left from the last chuunin exam by members of our village. There will also be teams like you from other villages working to disarm their traps so that their secrets will not be stolen. Refrain from engaging with the other teams. When you are in the forest of death, you will be under a genjutsu, so you will not remember any of the environment before you take the exam." Anko swung out her hand and tagged Shino, Hinata, Akaramu, Kiba and the sage. "Like everyone who enters the arena, you will not remember anything, so there is no need to fight."   
  
"Has the special team arrived?" The sage asked.  
  
"Yes," she put a hand behind her hand and chuckled charmingly, "but no group is going to disarm those tricky traps."   
  
"We can do it!" Kiba yelled and Akaramu barked in agreement. He pointed at himself with a thumb. "Nothing is too hard for us!"   
  
"I'm afraid you missed your mouth, baby," Anko taunted biting on her thumb and talking softly with a slur, "I'm a big boy, nutwing is too hard fort me."  
  
"Enough with you bibby." Kiba retorted.  
  
"That is sick shit on a stick wit." Anko stated.  
  
"Huh?" Kiba raised an eyebrow.  
  
"She means you are trying to carry an intelligent comment, or sick shit, on an inefficient sense of humour." The sage explained.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"You don't understand," she said, "there are some ninjas that are levels above everyone else in setting traps. Given enough creativity, a genin can arrange traps that can stump the strongest of ninjas and create a permanent dead zone that only a true genius can solve. It is not enough to set these traps off because they have a device that resets the trap. Genjutsus are the suspected trick and will be triggered by more than one sense. And every time, the hokage picks a group of genins to investigate these traps."  
  
"Don't the organizators of the exams keep record of the traps that are set and triggered each round?" Hinata rubbed her fingers together. "The ninjas who had set the trap should be able to disarm them."  
  
Anko messed up Hinata's hair. "Right, kiddo. But ninjas also should be able to remember their names."  
  
"Father, is one of the dead zones created by you?" Shino inquired.  
  
"Correct." The sage replied. "Apparently, the records suggested that milestone."   
  
Akamaru barked. "Akarmaru wants to know who set the other traps."  
  
"Kakashi was separated from his team and helped a team from the hidden village of Mist," Anko recited, "and Uchiha Itachi his own mark left in this place. Though they rest in the forest of death, they are too deadly for any genin."   
  
"You have heard the rules." The sage said. "Let us depart. Thanks Anko."  
  
"You're welcome," she held her breath, "I'll tell your name one day."

* * *

"The first trap is ahead." The sage said. "Enclose the area. Shino, proceed first."  
  
Team Eight hid behind four trees to surround a clearing. A rope hung from a tree and coiled into a noose that lied on the ground with a few leafs covering it. "That's what we have to disarm?" Kiba shouted. A brown bunny hopped out of the bushes near the tree. It triggered the noose and shot up to the tree to hang by its feet.   
  
"How careless," Hinata rushed out of the bushes to help the bunny.  
  
"No, Hinata." Shino intercepted and tackled her to the ground. He looked up and saw Kiba and his father with kunais in their heads. Turning Hinata over, Shino stabbed a kunai into her chest. Blood gushed out and painted his overcoat. He walked up to the hanging bunny, and slaughtered on the hook. Smoke consumed it and when that cleared, it was a bag of sand with a seal upon it.   
  
"Good work, Shino," Kiba and Akaramu dropped to his side, "you disarmed the first trap. How did you figure it was a genjutsu trap?"  
  
"I had to prevent Hinata from heading blind into the field to save the bunny." A brown mannequin rested where Shino had stabbed Hinata. "The illusion played out well up to that point, but in reality, you would have been more sensitive to the bunny falling into the trap and I should have stopped you."  
  
"Lame reasoning," Kiba stated, "but it turned out good anyhow."  
  
"Heading to the next trap, stick close to me." The sage said standing out of the bush. "We will have to travel between the trap that Kakashi set up and a trap from the hidden sand village."   
  
They dispersed from the trap and met up with team ten being heading by Shikamaru's father, Nara Shikato. Shikato rolled his shoulders and tilted his head to the sage. "Hiya," he said in a laid back fashion adjusting his ripped up vest spotted with dark brown stains, "formalities seem so useless here since we ain't going to remember this."  
  
"As far as that is concerned," the sage backhanded Shikato across his scarred face. Shikamaru chuckled mischievously, but Choji paused his intake of chips at the most. The loud crunching of the chips halted to give rise to a verse of a song bird.  
  
The final member of team ten, Ino, watched wantonly waiting with crossed arms for a reaction. On the sage's team, Shino stood so deadpan as ever, Hinata humbly hid behind Kiba who had piercing stares at the situation.   
  
"I truly thought that you weren't a violent man," Shikato cooly commented.  
  
"You are still responsible for the safety of your squad. Do not wander from the rites. As for your new outlook of me, it will pass." The sage stated. Kiba bursted into laughter. The sage then threw his elbow back into his son who crumbled into bugs. "We are both missing a student."  
  
"I am aware of that," Shikato replied and swatted Shikamaru's shoulder. He stood rubbing his shoulders.  
  
"He was talking about Ino." Shikamaru bluntly pointed out to his father.   
  
"Don't you trust that I know that?" He asked. "I want you to go find him."  
  
Akaramu leaped off Kiba's head and sniffed at a line of bugs. He lifted his head and barked. "Yahoo! He's got the scent."  
  
"That would be useless," Shikamaru started, "since Shino smells like his bugs, as he told me on our first mission, he can throw off his scent in many directions without making the smell weak or old. The best course of action is inaction. Ino knows where the major traps are so they should be able to avoid trouble. Ino has actually been out of our group for a while now. Shino would be also, but I don't know how she wasn't able to stop the rest of you."  
  
"Stop us from what?" Hinata asked.   
  
"Stop you from entering the trap," Shikamaru said.   
  
"We're in the trap!" Shikato cursed. "When did this happen?"  
  
"Any of the senses can fall under the illusion of a genjutsu." Shikamaru explained. "We were saved from trap from Choji's loud chewing."  
  
Choji stopped again and they could hear the bird again. Kiba waved his hands in front of himself. "Wait," he said, "it's just a bird."  
  
"Don't you find it odd that a song bird would inhabit the forest of death?" Shikamaru asked. "Ino doesn't know she had avoided the trap and helped Shino as well. Ahh, I'm going to forgive and forget this. How troublesome."  
  
"What should we do?" Choji asked.   
  
"Kill the bird."

* * *

"Do I know you?" Shino asked the long haired blonde girl in a purple tank top sporting two long white bands over her foreheands. The collar hung loose and folded around her neck. "I am," and he checked with his name tag on his jacket, "named Aburame Shino, and no matter the strenght of the opponent, I will not underestimate the moment."  
  
"Chill, Shino." Ino held her forehead protector that she wrapped around her waist. "We're from the same village. You left a memory of me with your teammate."  
  
"Hinata?" Shino asked.  
  
"I had hoped how Hinata had four bugs in her eyes, one of them would be a memory about the promise you made me." She took his hand and placed a bug into his palm. "You had a memory stored from each of the members of your team, and a strange one about you explaining to Hinata that you could place a bug in Kiba to suck away his added chakra. This memory was instructions, I had figured out, for that bug you put in Kiba. I just had to make him blow his nose a few times, and the bug was there."  
  
The small bug burrowed into his palm. "Thank you, Ino." Shino relived the promise he had made to her. "An Aburame may or may not be known for their forgetfulness, but a promise is what we cannot break."   
  
"I feel special that you included me in the thoughts you held important." Ino softly swayed side to side. "You so sounded half-hearted when you made me a promise to take me to your garden but you did care." She wrapped her arms around him and peaked him on the lips. She pushed him back to show him her smile. It was a flash of a smile that died away to a frown. "Ah, that was.."  
  
"Spontaneous," he filled in for her.   
  
"Yeah, and tragic too." She told him. "I'm going to die never remembering my true first kiss."  
  
"Would you wish to die before this mission is over and remember this kiss?" Shino asked. "Lao Tzu left us with this freedom: 'Health or possession: which has more worth?' I cherish my comrade's health, so I will surrender any memory for their preservation. Let us return."

* * *

A kunai pierced the red chest of the bird and it crashed into the green moth infested tree with a final note. "Good shot, Choji." Kiba said and patted Choji on his shoulders. "Can't agrue with results."  
  
Shikamaru sighed heavily but dropped further down when he heard the sound of a bird singing. "How troublesome." He muttered.   
  
"Hey, what the hell do you mean?" Shikato rusty voice treatened. "'Kill the bird.' You said."  
  
"How about this bird?" Kiba gave Shikamaru the finger. Akaramu barked. "He tells you, 'right here, buddy.'"  
  
Shikamaru's posture slacked off and he gave them a sluggish stare. "We must have not been in the trap at all."  
  
"What?!" Shikato shouted.   
  
"The bird song was to lure people into the trap." He said.   
  
Hinata winced as the Sage appeared before her and she saw a long pointed rock pretrude out of his back. All around the genins, four figures fell that looked like the Sage then bursting into bugs and the true one turned around to look at the group. "Stay close together, subordinates. We, journins, will take care of the projectiles." The sage peacefully and nodded to Shikato. "Be hesitant to move and don't be alarmed if you are pierced in a uncritical area."   
  
Shikato appeared before Kiba and hit off a rock spear with a kunai. "I haven't checked the list of fatal areas in a while." He admited. "Has that area, you know, been called fatal yet?"  
  
"What you blocked is not considered fatal in this situation," the Sage stated.   
  
"Keep a kunai low, boys," Shikato warned them.

* * *

Shino and Ino arrived at the area where team ten had set off to enter the trap. "Where are they?"   
  
"I don't know," Ino responded, "they should be here."  
  
"I would be best if we waited here," Shino stated. "We shouldn't cause them any more problems."  
  
Ino perked her ears to the song of a bird. "Lonely, isn't it?"  
  
"Huh?" Shino wondered. "To what are you refering?"  
  
"The bird that is singing." Ino answered. Shino lost his balance and sat down on a patch of sand covered ground. Ino offered her hand. "What happened?"  
  
"I think we have entered the trap your team was suppose to investigate." Shino announced.  
  
"No way," Ino said, "I have the map showing where the traps are."  
  
"Then, the bird call was a lure for them to enter the trap," Shino said crossing his legs in a full lotus, "they would have stayed in this position once they have found out that our replacements were fakes. We must assume that we are not in the trap. The question is: how do we communicate with them?"  
  
Ino paced up and down along the tree line humming a tune and Shino sat silently with his hands on his knees. "Eureka!" Ino snapped her fingers. "I got it."  
  
Shino snapped up and put his hands in his pockets. "I believe you in."

* * *

Shikamaru squated against the back of Choji who snacked on a piece of cake on a plate. His weary weak arms drooped over his knees and he connected them by their fingertips. "Our leaders are protecting us," he glaced over his father knocking another incoming spear of rock out of the way, "but the trap is too fast for us, genins, to move."   
  
Arms wrapped around Kiba from behind, and a rock was stopped before piercing him through his shoulder. Shikamaru turned his head with a crackle in his neck and saw Hinata with her arms around Kiba holding the rock. "Hinata," Shikamaru droned, "can you see through this illusion?"  
  
"Aye," she gently gesture with a nod and played with her hair mixing blood from her hands in it.   
  
"Search for any hints of seals hidden on the outside of this trap." He told her. Her vision spread out and she took note of seven seals surrounding the trap tighted high up in the trees. "If Ino has discovered the plan to free us, we would use that information."  
  
"I see them." Hinata said and then jolted her head back. "Shino!"  
  
Shino appeared in the cluster of the other genins and was panting hard. Half way to standing up, Kiba tried to hold Shino from behind and wrap his arms under his arms and around his chest. This help was stopped when Shino punched Kiba in the face and then got up the rest of the way. His hands rested on his shoulders then brushed down to the bottom of his coat. "Oh, maybe I shouldn't had been offended. Duh! How stupid of me!"  
  
"Ino?" Choji paused his crunching on his chips.   
  
"No worries." Shinos told Choji. "We're both fine."  
  
The lacky hands of Shikamaru came together to produce various sounding claps. "Too bad we weren't remember this."  
  
"Shit," Shino cursed. Kiba rubbed some blood from his nose and sniffed Shino. Akamaru joined and kept his distance to his allegric teammate to finally release a bark.  
  
"You're right," Kiba stated, "when has he ever swore? Very out of character."  
  
"Idiots," Shikaramu remarked. "Hinata will have some information for you about the locations of the seals around this trap."  
  
He nodded.

* * *

Ino took a step back before racing up the tree with a kunai in her hand. She drew closer to the tree truck and slashed the final note. She slipped and fell but Hinata caught her. Around her, stood the two teams and their temporary leaders. "Well done Ino."  
  
"What the hell did Ino do?" Kiba shouted.  
  
"She entered Shino's body to come get information to us and still remain outside the trap if help could only matter out there." Shikamaru explained.   
  
Shikato turned to face the other team's leader. "Well, no need to waste words here. So long."  
  
With that, team ten was gone. The sage removed his glasses, and rubbed them. Turning them slightly to reflect what was behind his shoulder, he saw a figure bolt from a high branch. "We must be getting on as well."  
  
-------- End of Chapter Nine ------------   
  
Next Chapter: More traps to disarm for team eight, and they may run into Team Ten again. Kurenai is even closer to the S-class criminal she is after.  
  
Notes: Yeah, this has taken me a long time to complete, but with Shikamaru, some brain teasing scheme has to come up for him to solve, or Ino, I guess some cleverness rubbed off on her.  
  
Strange that no one is going to remember anything that happens in this chapter. Almost allows me to do anything. hehe  
  
Predictions: Almost anything 


End file.
